


The Art of Living Your (Second) Life

by midnighteverlark



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Vampire, Domestic Fluff, Eventual Plot, Falling In Love, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Immortality, Life Saving, M/M, Mike Wheeler Loves Will Byers, Monster Boyfriends, Protective Mike Wheeler, Vampire Hunters, Vampire Mike, Vampire Turning, Vampire Will, Vampires, a little dark, blood tw, college age, i honestly don't know what this is or where it's going
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:48:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26370676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnighteverlark/pseuds/midnighteverlark
Summary: On a frigid night in late November, college student Will Byers is thrown from his car during a car crash and lies dying by the side of the road, undiscovered by rescuers. As he lies there, he hallucinates a dark haired boy named Mike who appears out of nowhere and tries to save his life. The strange thing is, saving Will's life apparently includes drinking his blood - but Will is too bleary to question it. The next morning, Will wakes up by the side of the road with not a scratch on his body... wearing a jacket that isn't his.The next time he sees Mike, he can't believe his eyes. And he has questions.Lots of questions.Primarily: what the hell did Mike turn him into?
Relationships: Will Byers/Mike Wheeler
Comments: 66
Kudos: 149





	1. The Boy Who Came Back from the Dead

_ Imagine this: _

_ You're pulling the car over. Somebody's waiting. _

_ You're going to die _

_ in your best friend's arms. _

_ And you play along because it's funny, because it's written down, _

_ you've memorized it, _

_ it's all you know. _

-Richard Silken

_ It is a serious thing _

_ Just  _ _ to be alive _

_ On this fresh morning _

_ In this broken world. _

-Mary Oliver

* * *

It’s a beautiful, ice-cold, clear night, and Will is dying.

He’s on his back, on the half-frozen ground of gritty mud and ice and sodden yellow grass, and he’s dizzy, and he’s bleeding, and he’s dying, and he knows it. The night sky is dark and clear above him, freckled with pinprick blue stars, and he thinks maybe he can smell smoke. Or metal. Something hot and ripping, acidic - it’s the car, he thinks, somewhere yards and yards and yards behind him. Or in front of him. Somewhere. Wherever it is, far away, he thinks maybe he can smell it. The sharp smell of smoke registers in his brain every once in a while - not the warm, cozy smell of woodsmoke or the familiar smell of his mother’s cigarettes, but a harsh, acidic smoke. A metal-smoke, a plastic-smoke, a gasoline-smoke. 

It was the ice. He thinks. There weren’t any other cars on the road. They hit a patch of black ice and the car lost traction. It shot across the ice, fishtailing, and then it spun, and then there was a rib-crunching jolt, and then it rolled. End over end. Will thinks the jolt might have been the car blasting against the safety barrier at breakneck speed. He remembers slamming back and forth between surfaces, his brain feeling like it was in a blender, his jaw cracking down so hard his tongue went hot and then numb and he felt at least two of his teeth split. And now he’s here. 

If he thinks about it very, very hard, he can almost remember a moment of freefall. Cold air, startling silence, bowls turned to water with shock. He doesn’t remember landing, but he must have, because here he is.

And now he’s dying.

He doesn’t know exactly how he knows, but he does. There’s something unmistakable about the sticky warmth pooling - and cooling - beneath him. The drifting, echoey feeling of not quite being tethered to his body. He thinks he should be cold, but he’s not. Or, rather, he can’t tell whether he is or not. He feels distant and fuzzy, like TV static, and at the same time sickeningly heavy. It  _ hurts, _ and at the same time doesn’t. He’s aware of the pain - overwhelming, screaming, mind-numbing pain - but it’s like it’s happening to someone else. 

But even through the strange, muted distance from his own body, he can tell unquestionably that something is _very_ wrong. That he’s unforgivingly aware of. His brain won’t stop barraging him with urgent messages of _wrong wrong wrong,_ his shoulder is _wrong_ and his arm is _wrong_ and something deep in his stomach is _wrong_ and his head is _wrong_ and he can’t even feel his legs. The pain signals are too overwhelming and scrambled to make out clearly, glutting his neurons with so much input that they seem to be closing up shop and calling it quits, but the feeling of muffled, panicked _wrongness_... That’s very clear. Unbidden, his lungs bubble out a gout of dark liquid that was going to be a sob. He chokes and coughs again on reflex, too weak to do it intentionally, and sucks in a whistling quarter-breath. It feels like he’s trying to breathe through a stir straw.

And he is so tired. It’s like the pain isn’t even there, even though he can still feel it - like he’s snuggled in his own soft, warm bed late at night after an exhausting day. The urge to sink into sleep is enormous, inexorable.

_ Mom, _ he thinks, and pulls his eyes open again with all the effort of lifting a car. The cold stars twinkle down at him through the thin, sharp air. Where is she? What happened to her? She was in the car with him. She was driving. Was she thrown from the car too?

Will jolts awake. He was gone, for a second there. He doesn’t even remember losing his train of thought or drifting off, but judging from the new stiffness of his limbs, time has passed. How much he can’t say. He’s profoundly cold. He can feel it touching his bones and the pit of his stomach, and when he gives a monumental effort to curl one finger - just to see if he can - he swears he hears frost crackle. Or maybe that was the bone. He’s not breathing very much, he realizes, and when his body finally does press out a thin gurgle of air, it doesn’t steam in the frigid air. Spears of pain shoot through his body in bursts, razor-sharp and white-hot-cold and then nothing. 

_ Oh, come on, _ he thinks vaguely,  _ how long does it take to bleed out? _

But he doesn’t think he’s bleeding anymore, that’s the problem. Wherever the blood was coming from, it seems to have slowed to a gummy trickle by now, freezing on the ground underneath him and getting all blocked up as his red blood cells throw themselves into one last pyrrhic battle to clot the wound.

He realizes, several seconds into the event, that something is touching and moving his head. His eyes have been half-open for a while, but now he attempts to actually use them, struggling weakly to focus his blurry vision on the dark shape above him.

“M’m?” he says. Almost says. It was going to be  _ Mom, _ but his mouth didn’t open as wide as he expected it to, and his lungs are having trouble moving air through his throat right now.

At first he’s glad, or he would be glad if he was linked enough to his body to actually interpret what he’s feeling. She’s here. Mom’s here. That’s good, that’s a safe and warm and positive idea. But then he remembers what’s happening, in some far-off, muted way, and he tries to push her away. Because something deep in his brain, almost subconscious, thinks,  _ I don’t want her to have to watch this. _

There’s a sound - a voice, he realizes after several long moments - and a light, and when he swims back to the surface after another frightening-comforting period of soft blackness, he’s just cognizant enough to process what it is.

It’s not his mom. It’s someone he doesn’t recognize. Some guy around Will’s age, maybe early twenties? He’s clean-shaven, so he could be younger. And he’s shining a flashlight in Will’s eyes, which makes it a little hard to make out any specifics beyond  _ pale skin dark hair bulky coat no beard. _

“There you are,” the guy is saying. He’s been talking for a while, now, but these are the first words that have actually registered with Will. Will coughs a little, something bitter frothing at the corner of his mouth, and a rough sleeve wipes it away. “There you are. Hey. Hey.” The guy takes a quick, trembling breath, then lets it out as a hoarse laugh. “Fuck. Thought you were gone for a second there.”

Will can’t move, and he can’t really feel anymore, but he can see. And hear. And in this way, he slowly discerns that his head is in the guy’s lap, and that the guy is poking and tugging at Will’s limbs, maybe trying to see exactly how broken they are.

_ Ow, _ Will tries to say but can only think.  _ Ow. Ow, stop. Stop, it hurts. _

He succeeds in making a tiny noise of protest, but by now the guy has moved on. He’s struggling with something, his elbow blocking Will’s vision, and a second later the sound of a zipper filters through the cotton in Will’s ears.

“There,” the guy is saying, “Okay. There we go.” 

He covered Will with his jacket. Will doesn’t feel any warmer, in fact he can’t feel the weight of the heavy coat on his body, but an unexpected ripple of emotion makes the backs of his eyes heat. 

_ Thank you, _ he wants to say,  _ That’s very kind of you, thank you. It’s no use, but thank you. _

The flashlight must be somewhere on the ground now, because the light is no longer shining directly in Will’s face, and with that impediment gone he can almost make out his companion. His vision is still a little wonky, and it’s hard to focus, but he can see just enough. The guy - boy? Man? - has tapered cheeks, wide chapped lips bleached white with the cold, and dark, dark eyes.

“Hey. Hey, come on. Stay with me. I said, what’s your name?”

_ Will. _

“What?”

He leans down further, still cradling Will’s head on his knees, and Will tries again.

“Will.”

“Will,” he echoes. A hand moves in Will’s vision, close to his face. He’s pushing Will’s hair back from his forehead. “I’m Mike.”

Mike’s voice is thick and slurred with tears. He’s crying for Will, for this person he’s never met, and Will feels another pull of emotion on his heart. At least somebody cares, somebody is here to hold him and cry for him when he goes.

Will closes his eyes. “Mike.”

“Hey, none of that. No, come on. Stop it. Come on. You can do this. Come on, Will. Will!”

He shakes Will, and then shakes him harder, and Will opens his eyes.

Mike sniffs, then swallows. “What’s your last name?”

Will thinks. He tries to swallow, but his tongue is so swollen and his throat is so dry that he almost chokes instead, and it takes him a few moments to get his tongue un-stuck. Last name. Last name. What do those sounds mean? It winds its way through what’s left of his brain and finally lands, and he opens his mouth. What  _ is  _ his last name? Mike, meanwhile, is doing something else. Something that hurts, but Will doesn’t really care anymore. He thinks maybe Mike is trying to rub the warmth back into the limbs that Will can’t feel anymore, except for distant pain. What was he doing? What was he thinking?

Last name.

“Byers,” he gasps out, triumphant.

_ Byers. _

_ I am Will Byers. _

_ I am Will Byers. _

_ I still exist. _

_ I am still alive. _

_ I - _

Like one final wave of self-preservation instinct, Will’s body gives a jolt. One last dose of adrenaline before he’s entirely spent. One last desperate, snarling grab at life. His heart, which has been very slow and quiet inside his chest, suddenly begins a weak pitter-patter. Even as they shut down, his organs are fighting blindly to keep him alive, and now they redouble their efforts.

The world regains a tiny measure of clarity. Some of the fog clears.

“I don’t wanna die,” he slurs, and then he starts crying. He can feel the wetness at the outer corners of his eyes, and his chest whistles and pops as his lungs begin the agonizing process of coughing out a sob.

And he doesn’t. With that last, bottom-of-the-barrel measure of  _ heave-ho _ effort, he remembers that he does not want to die.

_ I don’t wanna die, _ he tries to say again, but it comes out as barely-audible animal sounds. He thinks maybe Mike understood him anyway.

The final flush of blood in his head has woken his nerves just enough to feel a hand gently stroking his hair, carefully steering clear of that wet, throbbing, crunchy spot just behind his ear. Mike is still crying. Will can see the shine of the flashlight reflecting in the drops that occasionally fall and land on his own chest. 

“Are you sure?”

Even with his brain churned up like butter, this strikes Will as odd. It’s only a momentary idea, fleeting, not even a full thought.

“Yes,” he hisses out, eyes closing as another searing sob seems to rip his stomach lining clean through. “I...”

_ I have things to do. I didn’t finish college. I barely got a chance to legally buy alcohol. I never really apologized to my mom for being surly and harsh to her as a teenager. I never proved my dad wrong about me. I didn’t finish my projects. I didn’t say the things I should have said to my friends. I never got to meet the love of my life, if he exists. I barely even kissed anyone. _

_ I didn’t get to travel. _

_ I didn’t get to accomplish anything. _

_ I didn’t wrap those Christmas presents for Jonathan yet. _

He still has movies he wants to watch and food he wants to eat. He has birthday parties to celebrate and afternoons laughing with his friends and thoughts to have late at night. Damnit, he’s not done!

“I’m not,” he wheezes, “Done, I’m... ‘m...”

Defiantly, like he’s trying to cheat death through pure willpower, Will strains to sit up. What happens instead is that white-hot pain sears through him again, head-to-foot, and a slimy mixture of who-knows-what surges up his throat and out of his mouth. He feels a pang of guilt, something in him whispering,  _ ugh, I’m so sorry, _ but the rest of him can’t bring himself to care.

“Okay,” Mike says. He’s still petting Will’s hair, but when some liquid blocks Will’s throat and he starts struggling to cough, Mike gently sits him up. The blockage subsides and Will gurgle-gasps, shallowly. He thinks maybe there’s liquid in his lungs. He can feel it, almost. Heavy.

“‘m I gonn’ die?” Will whispers. His head lapses back with a worrying  _ crunch. _

Mike pauses. And then he says, “No.”

The pain in Will’s neck is mostly confusing. Normally he might be screaming bloody murder at the sharp, deep prick of two  _ something _ s pushing deep into his throat, and then deeper, piercing some tough inner lining and making his head swim. But compared to everything else... it barely registers on the scale. He groans, more dazed and perplexed than pained. He wonders what Mike is doing. He wonders if it matters at this point, and then decides it doesn’t. This is kind of a nice way to go, anyway. Mike is hugging Will to his body, Will still draped in the heavy coat, sitting halfway up at an awkward angle. One of Mike’s palms is pressed to Will’s skull, holding his head at the right angle for him to bury his mouth in Will’s neck. The other is curled around Will’s back, supporting him.

The world blurs again, becoming light and floaty, and Will thinks,  _ This is it. _

But then Mike’s head lifts, and he shifts around, doing something, and then something is being pressed against Will’s mouth. Something warm and soft-solid. Skin. An... arm? A wrist. It’s wet, and the liquid is hot. 

“Drink this,” Mike coaxes. He sounds like he suddenly developed a lisp, and when Will’s bleary and wandering eyes find Mike’s face, it’s strange and unrecognizable. Everything from his upper lip down is smeared in something dark and shiny, and two gleaming sharp objects press against Mike’s lower lip. He pushes his wrist to Will’s lips again, a little more firmly. “Come on. Open your mouth.”

Two puncture marks in the flesh make Mike’s blood run freely.

Will, too sleepy and confused to even attempt to make an effort, gives a small interrogative groan.

Fingers prod at his mouth, and then his jaw is being gently worked open, and then there’s a wrist between his teeth and a fresh taste of copper on his tongue. Not stale and clotted like Will’s own blood in his mouth, but hot and salty. 

“Suck and swallow,” Mike says firmly, and the last dredge of humor in Will’s brain gives a quirk of amusement. And then, with nothing else to do, he attempts it. His throat moves, parched and scratching, and the copper taste moves from the front of his mouth to the back. “Good,” Mike says. “Try again. Come on. You can still do this. Just a little longer, okay?”

Will tries again, the slick liquid dampening the back of his throat this time. He’s glad he threw up earlier, or else he definitely would be now. He almost expects Mike to say something else, but Mike’s head has ducked again, nose and chin digging into the skin of Will’s throat as Mike’s mouth locks around the wounds there. A hot ache spreads through Will’s throat again as Mike drinks.

Will can’t tell if this is real, or if it’s normal, if it’s supposed to be happening. He can’t quite remember. Is this weird? Is this normal? It... He can’t remember. If it’s happening then surely it’s supposed to. It’s too much effort to try to think about, anyway. He can feel the ground underneath him, and the cold, and the rhythmic ache at his throat, and if he can still feel those things it means he’s not dead yet.

He doesn’t realize he’s drifting off until something is pried from his mouth, and he swallows one last time so he can take a breath.

“That should be enough,” Mike’s voice says, breathless and very far away. “I think that -”

Will’s body convulses. A flush of cold crashes through him, like mountain streamwater being dumped over his very soul, but it’s not numbing cold. It’s shocking, electrifying, and it’s followed up immediately by a rush of unbearable heat. He’s burning.  _ He’s on fire, _ he’s burning he’s -

Mike is squeezing him, trying to suppress the violent spasms of Will’s limbs. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says, sounding panicked. “You’re okay. I’ve got you, this part doesn’t take long, I promise, you’re okay -”

He’s aware of several pops and crunches, of a shoulder socket popping wetly back into place, of cracked teeth loosening and coming out in his mouth. His diaphragm clenches like a fist, lungs seeming to flatten entirely as a frothy liquid spumes from his mouth, and then he takes his first full breath in years and uses it to scream.

* * *

Will is on his feet faster than he thought humanly possible.

It’s morning.

Golden sunlight slants through the scraggly trees that line one side of the road. The birds are singing, and the ground is a slushy November freeze of mud and ice and three-week-old snow crust.

He falls down again almost immediately. His heart is pounding. Train-piston-fast and strong as a stallion kicking the inside of his ribs. Both hands rise to his chest, pressing, feeling the heartbeat, but he can’t feel it through his thick coat. Still, it’s there. It’s there and he’s here,  _ not dead. _

His hands grope over his face, his head, and then back down to his torso. Dried blood crackles on his skin and in his hair, but there’s nothing beneath the matted tangle of congealed blood and hair. One leg of his jeans is ripped open, letting in the frigid air, and there’s not a shred of clothing on him that  _ isn’t _ stained dark with rusty red and mud brown. A trail of dried vomit colors the front of his coat.

The coat.

This isn’t his coat.

Memories are flashing in his head out of order. The black ice. The car spinning and then rolling. The taste of blood. Blue stars, cold and very clear, high above him. The smell of mud and old snow. Mike’s voice.

Mike.

None of that could have happened. But it must have. How else could Will be drenched in dried blood, his clothes ripped apart from the car crash and his abrupt acquaintance with the ground, and still alive the next morning with not a scratch on him? And where else did he get this coat?

_ Blood loss, _ he thinks vaguely, sticking his hands in the pockets of the coat and turning in circles, completely at a loss for what to do.  _ Blood loss makes you hallucinate batshit crazy things. _

But  _ what _ blood loss? What injury does Will have that would have bled that much? He strains to feel around under the back of the coat, rubbing his back and shoulders to feel for ragged, open flesh. Nothing. His feet are in perfect working order - though he seems to be down a shoe. That’s probably why he fell when he tried to jolt straight from unconscious to a blind sprint. He legs are fine, but a little cold because of the state of his jeans. Nothing on or in his torso seems to be amiss. His arms are okay. His head... well, that’s always the tricky part. There’s not a scrape on the  _ outside, _ but who knows what kind of brain damage he might have. He’s freezing cold and stiff as all  _ hell _ from spending the night on the ground, outside, in November, but otherwise... he’s fine.

It doesn’t make sense.

_ Mom, _ he thinks, and for one horrible second he flashes back to a moment on the ground, in the mud, dying.  _ Where is she? _

Will blows into cupped hands to try to warm them, but it doesn’t seem to help. Then he pulls off his remaining shoe and, in muddy socks and a coat that is not his, hikes up the small embankment to the road to search for his car.


	2. The Ghost on I-70

_God, I’m fucking starving._

Will’s one remaining shoe bounces and spins at his side where he’s holding it by the laces, swinging against his knee every couple steps. How long has it been since he’s eaten? It must have been dinner last night. At most, he’s missed breakfast. But it feels like he hasn’t eaten in a week. Maybe he can hitchhike to a diner. Or a hospital. Fuck, why is he so _hungry?_

 _Maybe your body used up all its energy healing,_ something in his mind whispers, but he brushes it aside. That didn’t happen.

He tried locating the car, but it’s gone. All Will found was a sharply convex section of safety railing beside the road, and scattered detritus - plastic and glass and metal - and a lot of footprints leading to where the car clearly _was_. There are ragged gouges in the ground where the car flipped, a long skid mark, and a flat indentation in the ground where it finally settled. When Will found this scene, he spent several panic-driven moments yelling around for his mother before logic returned. If the car is gone, and she’s gone, people must have been here to help. The swarm of footprints in the dirty crust of snow attest to that.

After Will found the scene of the crash, he paced the distance back to his resting spot, easily identifiable by the Will-shaped flattening of grass and the dark stain in the ground. He was on the other side of the road, down a small embankment, at least a dozen yards away. There was no way anybody could have seen him from the car. They must have arrived, taken his mother, and left. But why didn’t they look for him? Why didn’t she tell them to wait for him? She never would have let them leave without Will. Ever.

What if she was unconscious when they found her? What if she was -?

 _No,_ Will tells himself. _Don’t think that._ After all, if Will survived the crash, his mother _must_ have. _She_ had her seatbelt on.

There’s no one around. Barely two cars have passed since Will woke up. This is a rarely-traveled side road, parallel to the interstate. His mom called it “the scenic route” when they turned here yesterday evening. The two worn-down lanes pass by fields, wintering farmland and swaths of scraggly forest. There’s not even a building in sight.

But now, with his hearing back to normal and daytime traffic returning, Will can hear distant cars. It’s the interstate, he thinks, just south of this road. If he can just find his way there, surely he can flag someone down and get food. Help. He meant help.

So he starts to walk.

* * *

“Will!”

Mike’s hands are cupped around his mouth, trying to amplify the shout. He turns in a circle, boots squishing on the stained, flattened grass where the boy named Will lay dying last night.

“Will Byers!”

This is bad.

He knew he should have taken Will home. Mike had planned on being there when he woke up. He kept watch all night, standing guard over his body so that no well-meaning rescuers would find him and unknowingly put themselves in danger while trying to save him. Mike doesn’t remember much from his first day after turning, and honestly he’s glad he doesn’t. Because once you do wake up, you wake up hungry.

He _knew_ he should have taken Will home. But moving him could have hurt him. It’s like trying to move somebody who’s having a seizure; just a bad idea all around. And anyway, home is miles away and Mike didn’t have a car with him. It seemed like a better idea just to hunker down and wait.

Which is what Mike did, all night and into the morning... until a few minutes ago.

 _Stupid,_ he chastises himself. _You big dumb idiot. Of course this would happen. Of course you’d let him wake up alone and confused after_ that. _Stupid, stupid Mike._

He was gone for maybe ten minutes. All he wanted to do was go get some food, so Will could eat as soon as he woke up, and maybe the first day would be easier. He has two rabbits hanging from the hip of his belt, still warm. His dad once taught him to hunt, a long time ago when this road didn’t exist yet and this woodland seldom saw a human face, and Mike still hasn’t forgotten how. And rabbit goes down easy. It’s like broth, in a way. 

But now Mike has returned to the blood-stained impression in the ground where Will was for most of the night - complete with the ragged path of crushed grass and broken-up snow where Will hit the ground and rolled for a couple yards before stopping - and Will isn’t here.

Cursing, Mike scans the ground. Footsteps - of bare or socked feet, it looks like - lead through a patch of crusty snow towards the road, but beyond that it’s nearly impossible to tell where he went.

But Mike knows. Suddenly, he knows. Will just woke up; he’ll go where there’s food.

* * *

The jacket hanging from Will’s shoulders, a little too big on him, would have been very stylish in the mid ‘70s. It’s a brown ski jacket, padded on the outside and fleecy on the inside, with a subdued rainbow of stripes across the collarbones. And it’s _very_ worn - which would stand to reason, if the owner had been using it every winter for two decades. But Mike didn’t look any older than Will. It can’t have been his that whole time. 

_It’s a hand-me-down,_ Will thinks, shoving his hands farther inside the pockets. _It’s vintage. It’s from a thrift store. That’s all._

It smells like him. Like Mike. It also smells like the country air, and mud and blood and vomit. But if Will zips it all the way up and tucks his nose into the collar for elusive warmth, he gets a lungful of whatever Mike uses for soap and deodorant. A little musty, like sweat, like maybe he’s been wearing it consistently for a while, but not unpleasant. It reminds Will of his mother’s spice cabinet - a little like clove, a little like ginger, a little like old wood or autumn leaves. Or maybe that’s just the middle-of-nowhere he’s smelling. 

He wonders if and how he’s supposed to return it to its owner. It’s clearly a well-loved jacket. He wouldn’t feel right just keeping it.

Then again, he doesn’t feel right in general. Everything is too loud, scents too strong and overpowering, and it’s all so goddamn _bright_. What he’d do for a pair of sunglasses. He squints and glares against the cheerful morning light, and he swears he’s getting a sunburn on his cheeks and the back of his neck even though he’s freezing cold and it’s winter.

He’s sick. It’s a cold or something, that’s all. He spent a night on the ground, he’s bound to feel a little out of sorts. Who knows how many spiders he ate in his sleep.

He rolls his tongue around in his mouth. It feels dry; he can barely summon up any spit. He could chug three gallons of water right now. Actually, no, he doesn’t want a cold drink, he wants something hot. That feels right. He’s craving _something,_ he just can’t quite figure out what. Coffee? Not quite, but almost. Hot and bitter is _almost_ the right combination. _Fuck,_ he’s hungry. Where is he even going? If he wasn’t so hungry he might be able to think clearly. He would murder a man without hesitation if it just meant he’d get to eat something.

“Ow!” he hisses, hands shooting up to his face. The shoe dangling from one hand kicks him lightly in the chest. “Shit. What the hell...”

His mouth hurt, for a second there. He felt like someone was stabbing him in the gums, on either side of his upper mouth. It was only for a second, and it’s gone now, but it surprised him enough to jolt him out of his hunger for a moment.

As it happens, that moment is just enough for him to look up and notice a distant silhouette. At this distance the man is a grain of rice, moving minutely beside something the size of a small Lego block. A truck. That’s what it is. The miniscule figure moves between the truck and a smaller smudge, maybe a car. The whole scene is pulled over a few feet from the side of the road that Will has been following, hoping it’ll lead him from the scenic route to the interstate. So far it hasn’t. But now there’s this man. Woman? He can’t even tell at this distance.

Will licks dry lips, considering, and then trudges on. 

His feet are sore from walking shoe-less along the gravelly side of the road, but as the smudge morphs into a recognizable car and the Lego block resolves itself into a tow truck, his footsteps pick up pace. He’s nearing the end of this whole nightmare. The driver can give him a ride somewhere, and then he can call for help, and then he can go meet his mom - wherever she is - and this will all be behind him. He just needs to push over that first domino.

Something smells good. Some sort of food. Maybe the driver has a bag of fast food in the passenger seat of his truck, and the smell is wafting down the street. It doesn’t smell like fast food, though. In fact, Will can’t identify the scent at all beyond _food._

“Excuse me.”

He’s still too far away. The man didn’t hear him. Yes, it is a man. Will can tell now.

“Excuse me!”

Oh. He has headphones on. Now Will can make out the Walkman clipped to the guy’s belt. He’s bobbing his head a little as he goes about his work, hooking up the stalled car to his truck with clear boredom.

Will stops a few feet behind him, one hand shoved awkwardly in his pocket and the other still holding his left shoe. How is he supposed to approach this interaction? _Good day, dear sir. As you can see, I’m in a bit of a rub._ Will shakes his head at himself just as another stomach cramp makes him clench his jaw.

That’s about when the guy seems to sense something. His head twitches up like he heard something. He glances around. Goes back to work aligning a chain. Then he glances once more over his shoulder, catches sight of Will, and does a double take that nearly sends him over the edge of the ramp he’s standing on.

“Jesus!” he yells, stumbling back. He whips the headphones off his ears, and the faint, tinny chorus of a pop song filters through the foam. 

Will starts to lift his hand in a wave, realizes he’s holding his shoe, and waves with the other hand instead. What is he supposed to say? Hi? Can I have some of your food? Please drive me to a hospital, I think I need a brain scan?

Instead, Will’s eyes land on the tow truck. “Did you tow a green Pinto?” he blurts. He can tell as soon as he says it that it didn’t make any sense. There’s something blocking his lips and tongue from moving as they normally would. He pushes his tongue around the front of his mouth, trying to feel what the hell is going on. Is something swelling? Is that why his mouth hurt earlier?

“What?” the guy says finally. He’s white as a sheet, under his full beard, and tense as a wire. Will swears he can hear the guy’s rapid heartbeat from six feet away.

Oh, yeah. All the blood. No wonder the guy looks ready to bolt or vomit or both.

“A Pinto,” Will tries again, speaking very clearly to compensate with whatever is wrong with his mouth. “Last night.”

Will is starting to wonder if this guy speaks English. He’s just standing there, staring, mouth moving like he’s lost for words. Finally he manages, “I - fuck, man, are you... D’you need me to take you to a hospital?”

He doesn’t have time for this. He just wants to goddamn eat, and _then_ he can deal with other things. Aggravated now, Will steps onto the ramp. The man takes a step back. “My _car,_ ” he says, loudly and as clearly as he can, and oh great, now his mouth is hurting again. “Did. You. Tow. It? It’s a green -”

“Hey, just -” The man’s hands are out in front of him, patting the air as if trying to wave Will away. “Just keep it cool, man.”

A wave of dizziness passes over Will and he braces himself on the hood of the car that’s propped halfway up on the ramp. Since when did he move so far forward? 

He’s breathing deep, trying to clear his head, when he realizes something that makes his skin crawl. The scent that drew him towards the truck wasn’t coming from a bag of fast food or a lunch box full of leftovers. It was coming from the driver. The man’s heartbeat is thundering in Will’s ears now, hot and fresh and alive, and there’s a brief, awful moment when Will forgets what’s happening, and who he is, and where he is. For that one second, he exists entirely in the moment, untethered to any memory or consequence. He’s ravenously hungry and he knows somehow, he just _knows_ that if he cracks this man’s skull open against the corner of the truck and rips open the biggest vein in his throat or wrist to drink from while the heart is still beating, he’ll feel better. That’s all there is. Hunger, sustenance. 

Confusion is the only thing that breaks the bubble. The man says, “Look, I’m gonna call you some help, okay? I got a radio in the truck, just hold on a second,” and he’s jumping off the ramp to the ground and hurrying around the corner of the truck with an anxious glance back at Will. In one part of Will’s mind, he knows this is his chance. The guy’s back is turned. It would be easy. The other half of him is reeling with bewilderment. It’s enough to jar him out of his instincts for a second. What the hell is going on? What’s wrong with him?

The second is over quickly, and the bubble encompasses him again. He steps off the side of the ramp and paces forward swiftly, honing in on the warm, rapidfire heartbeat he can still hear -

His body jolts around as something snags him by the elbow. Will twists in shock, trying to see whoever is marching him swiftly towards the treeline.

“I leave you for ten whole minutes,” Mike says under his breath, and Will stops struggling.

“Where are -”

“Shh.”

Mike steers them into the woods and down a rocky slope, guiding them deftly between brambles and through shrubs as if he’s been here a thousand times before. Will tries digging in his heels once or twice, his head fuzzy and body weak with hunger, trying to turn back. _Wait,_ he wants to say, _I was about to -_

But Mike just keeps a firm grip on his arm, eventually sliding his hand down to interlace their fingers instead. “Nope,” he says, as Will looks back for the third time. He swears he can still smell his almost-meal. “No can do. Bad idea. Come on, I got us food.”

That gets Will’s attention.

 _He’s real,_ he thinks, as Mike sits them down on the rough bark of a fallen tree. _Or I’m hallucinating for the second time in twenty four hours._

Right at the moment, Will doesn’t really care which is the case. He’s laser-focused on the two rabbits that Mike is untying from his belt. They smell like food, too. Not as overwhelmingly enticing as the truck driver, but... food. If the driver was a gourmet steak dinner, the rabbits are stale protein bars. It’s not especially mouth-watering, but hey. He’s hungry.

But then Mike tries to actually hand him a dead rabbit, and Will balks. It’s lukewarm, almost cold. Will’s nose wrinkles. There’s a war raging in his head. Everything in him wants to dig in like it’s a milkshake, all his cells straining towards the nutrients that will keep them going, but... it’s a bunny. It’s furry, and doesn’t smell very good beneath that undefinable _food_ smell, and it’s still _looking_ at him with dead eyes. And it’s _cold._ Blech. 

He can’t do it.

“Go on,” Mike encourages. Will glances up, finding a surprising depth of understanding in those dark eyes. In the daylight, Mike is even paler than Will thought. His dark eyes and dark, wavy hair - and freckles that Will hadn’t noticed last night - stand out against his skin. “I know you’re hungry.”

Will’s body is so desperate for sustenance that he feels like he could cry, hearing that. He’s shaken and lost and confused and horrified by himself, and he bites his lip and pushes the rabbit away.

Mike looks down at the jumbles of bone and fur in his lap, seeming to think. Then, so nonchalantly that Will doesn’t realize what he’s doing until it’s already done, he lifts one to his mouth. Will makes a face, but his pulse starts to race as the smell of blood reaches him. His knuckles whiten where his hands are fisted over his knees. 

Mike’s head moves a little over the lump of fur. His hair falls forward, hiding his face, and Will shudders when he realizes he can hear a very slight sucking sound. Then Mike’s head lifts, his bottom lip dark as if he’s been drinking red wine. One thin drop starts sliding down towards his chin - Will has a bizarre impulse to dart forward and lick it off - and he rubs it away with the back of a wrist. His jaw works like he’s swishing the liquid around in his mouth, and then he cups his hands and spits the mouthful of blood into them.

“Here,” he says, quietly, like maybe he’s a little uncertain. “Better?”

Will eyes the offering. On the one hand, fucking _gross._ On the other...

Mike sees Will’s expression and chuckles sheepishly. “I know. But you really need to eat something. Trust me.” He holds his hands a little closer. A few drops are filtering through his fingers already, going to waste. “Come on, before it gets cold again.”

Will holds out for a total of three seconds before something in him snaps and he cups Mike’s hands in his own, head jerking down. He buries his mouth in Mike’s cupped hands, sucking in a few drops and trying not to think about it.

Thankfully, he doesn’t have to try very hard for long. The blood doesn’t taste like blood, at least, not like he expected. Not like it did last night. He expected to be choking and gagging, but the first swallow doesn’t even make him grimace, and it’s all downhill from there. A good amount of the liquid spills, running down both of their wrists and forearms, but more of it makes it into his mouth.

He retreats once Mike’s hands are bloody and empty, surprised at himself but too eager to care. He waits impatiently for Mike to repeat the process, dipping his head to drink without hesitation this time. 

It helps. He can already tell. That awful rip-gnaw of hunger cramps are already starting to fade, and he feels more solid and less dizzy with every swallow. A headache that he didn’t even realize he had starts to ease.

By the third or fourth handful, Will is getting impatient. This rabbit-to-mouth-to-hands-to-mouth process takes too long. The next time Mike’s head comes up, Will finds himself veering forward, glancing at Mike’s flushed lips. Why not? Cut out the middle man and all. Mike blinks in surprise, but seems to quickly understand what Will wants. And as Will cautiously presses their lips together, sighing in satisfaction as he takes the blood straight from his companion’s mouth, he swears he sees Mike’s pale cheeks go pink.

* * *

 _He has very little control over what he’s doing right now,_ Mike reminds himself as Will gives a desperate little groan and presses closer. _He’s out of his mind with hunger and he just turned last night, everything is too bright and too loud and too_ much _for him. He has no idea what he’s doing. He probably won’t even remember this._

Will is acting on more animal instinct than conscious intent right now. Mike is acutely aware of and familiar with this fact. And who knows what’s going through his head? Maybe he thinks he’s somewhere else, with someone else. Or maybe he’s just after the blood. That seems like the most likely explanation, because Will pushes his tongue along the line of Mike’s incisors before he retreats with a sigh, taking extra time to feel out one of Mike’s elongated canines with the tip of his tongue. 

When Will leans back, Mike sees him tonguing at his own newly sharpened teeth, looking confused and surprised. 

“They’ll retract back when you’re not hungry,” Mike croaks, and then clears his throat, dipping his head over the rabbit again to hide his burning face.

Will takes the blood from Mike’s mouth twice more before he can be convinced to drink from the rabbit himself. Mike tries very, very hard not to overthink it too much. Will seems to resent the rabbit a little, resisting even in the midst of feeding, but eventually he gives in and locks his jaw correctly, swallowing clumsily but rhythmically.

Mike watches with some amusement as Will finally, _finally_ starts feeding for real. What a gentle soul he must have been in his first life, if he was so loathe to eat even with all his instincts screaming at him.

Mike wonders who he was.

He wonders who he’ll be, now that everything is different.

When Will has drained the first animal entirely, breaking away with a little gasp, he surprises Mike yet again by holding the second rabbit up towards Mike. Offering him a sip. Will’s mouth and chin are wet with rusty liquid, and his eyes are dark and unfocused, but he cocks his head in a silent question - _want some?_ Taken aback, Mike accepts the offer before handing it back and watching Will dig in with verve. 

New turns are usually so violently jealous of their food. They don’t share. They just don’t.

Except that this one does.

Will’s brow smooths as he drinks, the hunger finally fading away, and Mike resists the urge to reach out and brush the greasy bangs back from his forehead like he did last night. They’re going to have to get Will cleaned up before anyone else sees him, or they’ll have people calling the authorities left and right. Like the truck driver that came very close to his demise today without even realizing it.

Mike almost smiles as he watches, then realizes he’s being creepy and looks out into the sparse winter woods instead. He may have broken his promise, but he thinks... No, he knows Will was worth breaking it.

 _Shit,_ Mike thinks, as he stares out into the woods. Will is Mike’s turn, which means he’s Mike’s responsibility. _What the hell do I do now?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said "monster boyfriends" and I meant it.  
> I'd love to hear your thoughts!


	3. Blood Relations

_I need to find my mom._

That was the first thing Will said after they... ate. He felt his face go hot as soon as he said it. It sounded so childish. But Mike just tossed the remains of the rabbits into the trees - _for scavengers,_ he explained - and said, “Was she in the car?”

Will nodded, trying to wipe the slick liquid off his face with his sleeve. He realized too late that it was actually Mike’s jacket sleeve, which was now probably stained thanks to him.

“They probably took her to Memorial.”

The name rang a faint bell. “Hospital?”

“Yeah. That one’s nearest.” Mike seemed to look him over, considering something. “I dunno if it’s the best idea, though.”

Will bristled. “What? Seeing my mom, seeing if she’s okay?”

Mike held up his hands. “You might not wanna be around people for a bit. That’s all.” His eyes held the unspoken subtext: _you saw what happened with the driver._

But Will, like a stuck record, could only say, “I have to see her.”

She’s bound to be going out of her mind with worry. Will knows his mom. She’s probably bashing down some door right now, demanding that someone send out a search party for him. Or maybe she’s already leading said search party herself. She’s been a little better about being overprotective, now that he moved out, but then again... he’s never been in a car crash before, either. The longer he lets her wonder and worry, the more likely she is to give herself an aneurysm or something. He can’t let her think he’s dead. He just can’t do that to her.

Mike must have seen the determination in his eyes, because after a moment he quirked his lips to the side, sighed, and said, “Well, we can’t go like this.”

Mike gestured to himself, kindly, as if the issue was the rabbit blood on his own hands and face, his own greasy hair, and not Will’s horrifying appearance.

So, it was decided. Clean up at Mike’s place first, then head to the hospital.

They’ve been walking for about ten minutes. Apparently Mike’s house isn’t too far away, but the going is slow - mainly because Will is still in his socks and they’re walking through the woods. With how Will looks right now, walking along the side of the road would be asking for trouble. The soles of his feet feel bruised, and he dropped his shoe, somewhere along the way. Oh, well. Not like it was a great help to him anyway.

It doesn’t seem fair that he could survive what happened last night, and his feet still hurt from trudging around the forest shoe-less.

 _Shower,_ he reminds himself, bolsters himself, as Mike glances back to make sure Will is still following. Mike said Will could use his shower and borrow some clean clothes, and it’s the only thing keeping Will’s feet moving forward. He’s built it up in his head to be a sort of reset button. He just has to make it that far, and then he can wash all the mud and grime and dried blood off of himself, wash _last night_ off of himself, and get into clean clothes, and maybe even borrow some shoes. And then maybe he’ll feel real again, and he can step back into the inertia of his day-to-day life and find his mom and his brother and finish his essay and go to work and go home for the holidays and go on with his somewhat dull, somewhat stressful but mainly pleasant life. But right now, none of that feels possible. He doesn’t even know why.

He’s entered a kind of liminal space in his own mind. None of this feels quite real - or maybe it just feels _separate,_ like he’s in a different dimension that doesn’t affect or interact with whatever world he was in yesterday. It’s so completely divorced from his everyday life that he can’t conceptualize it as happening in the same universe. Like waking up at 4:00am to get on a plane, or staying up very late with friends to get 7-11 slushies after midnight, today is happening in its own plane of existence.

It feels like a new day in a new world with completely different rules. A world where you can break most of the bones and organs in your body, bleed out, collapse a lung or two, and get up and walk away the next morning. Where you lose yourself for a few minutes and almost attack a complete stranger. Where rabbit blood tastes like a light, savory broth, and where a dark-haired boy feeds you out of his hands. And mouth.

Will’s shoulders curl forward with embarrassment. He can’t believe he _did_ that.

 _This is crazy,_ he thinks. _You're walking home with a guy you’ve never met before in your life. Who says he’s not just part of some sick cult? He might be about to bring you to some cabin in the woods, strip you naked and dismember you_. 

But...

He won’t.

Will has no idea how he knows, but he _knows_ Mike won’t hurt him. 

Mike cried for him and brushed his hair back last night. He brought Will food and helped him eat. He stopped Will from killing someone accidentally, and he hasn’t once been impatient or harsh with him, even through Will’s bumbling confusion and cluelessness. Either Mike really is a good person, or he’s very good at pretending.

And anyway, that’s a train of thought that belongs in yesterday’s life. The same rules don’t apply anymore. Today, Mike is Will’s... his what? Savior? That sounds too grandiose for what happened last night. Last night wasn’t a triumphant movie moment, hero and victim, mighty sacrifice, trumpets in the soundtrack, larger than life. It was much smaller and quieter than that. It was mud and stars and a horrible quiet pain that slowly took over everything, and they were just two people who happened to cross paths when Will was dying, and Mike made an offer, and Will made a decision. Mike was... Mike is... a companion. That’s it. There are some things two people can’t go through together without bonding, getting attached to each other somehow no matter how little they know each other, and near death experiences top the list. Whatever happened yesterday, it tied their separate paths together. 

But something about that thought grates on Will. Not Mike - it was something else. Near death experiences.

For maybe the fifth time, Will lifts two fingers to his own throat, pressing them under his jaw. There it is. A pulse, strong and elevated from hiking through the woods.

Mike glances back again, maybe worried by Will’s long silence, and catches Will in the act. Will’s hand shoots down, sheepish.

“Sorry,” he says, though he has no idea why. Then, when Mike takes a half breath as if he’s about to respond, Will rips the bandaid off. “Listen - I - did I die?”

Mike pauses for a minute, letting Will catch up to him so they can walk side-by-side. Then, eyes forward, he says, “Yeah. But you’re back.” 

“So you lied to me.” Mike glances at him curiously and Will says, “You said I wouldn’t.” 

“But you’re _back,_ ” Mike says again, a little strained, like he’s stressed. “It was the best I could do, Will, I... I couldn’t have saved you. Not _that_ way. You were too...” 

Birdsong and clattering branches fill in Mike’s silence. The bare branches of an Indiana winter are as familiar to Will as his own face, but he’s never been in this area before. Or at least, the closest he’s come is in the seat of a car, whipping past on the interstate. They were about an hour and a half from home when the accident happened. Will knows he’s south and west of Hawkins, and who knows how many miles away, but beyond that... He could be anywhere in Indiana, for all he knows. But it smells familiar. Not like the foreign-exciting smell of the woods around campus, full of pine and clay. These woods smell like childhood, like making swords out of sticks and hiding away in Castle Byers for long afternoons, and something in the back of his mind whispers, _you’re home._ Will sniffs, wondering if his sense of smell really is heightened, or if he’s just paying more attention than usual.

When it’s clear that Mike isn’t going to finish his sentence, Will speaks, quietly. “Thank you.”

Mike doesn’t seem to know what to say to that. He opens and closes his mouth a time or two, eventually landing on an awkward, “Yeah.” He course-corrects Will, who had been veering off down a slope. “It’s this way.”

This time they both lapse into an uncertain silence. It’s so awkward that it makes Will laugh as a sort of defense mechanism, and then Mike is looking at him so he has to come up with a plausible reason for laughter before he makes it even weirder.

“It’s just -” he says, grasping at straws - and he catches one. “I don’t think we’ve even introduced ourselves. Well -”

_Hey. Hey, come on. Stay with me. I said, what’s your name?_

_Will._

_What?_

_Will._

_Will. I’m Mike._

_Mike..._

“Not... really. I mean, not -” He’s rambling, anxious and not sure what he’s doing, and he makes himself stop and start over. With a breath, he stops, making Mike stop too. He meant to hold out his hand, introduce himself properly this time, but what comes out when he meets Mike’s deep brown eyes is, “Who _are_ you?”

Mike breaks eye contact, like he’s nervous, scuffing one shoe along in a patch of crusted-over snow. How Will envies those shoes. His own socks are wet through and freezing cold.

“I’m, uh.” Mike flops his arms at his sides - a big, loose, childish gesture that Will suspects is a very old habit. “I’m Mike. Michael Wheeler. I...” He puffs out his cheeks with an exhale, then laughs at himself. “Gee, I dunno. What do you wanna know?”

 _Gee?_ Will thinks. It sounds like a fake-smiley advertisement with a 1950s aesthetic. _Gee whiz, these Fruity Pops sure are delicious!_ But it doesn’t sound fake coming from Mike’s lips.

Will spreads his own arms, looking up to the branches above as if they’ll give him some answers. “Oh, I don’t know, how ‘bout we start with, uh, _what the fuck?”_ Mike breathes out a soft laugh, like he’s about to say more, but Will can’t stop now. “Who are you? Why did you find me? What the fuck is going on? Where are you really taking me? What are you? What did you _do_ to me? Am I even still alive? Am I a ghost, are we ghosts? What -”

His voice breaks on the last phrase and Will bites back the rest of the flood. Mike’s hand twitches, like he was about to reach for Will, but he doesn’t. 

“We’re not ghosts. Look, touch me. Touch this tree. Solid, right?”

This time, Mike does hold out his hand. Will knows what will happen - he brushed up against Mike plenty of times earlier, and he thinks they were holding hands at one point, he can’t quite remember. It’s too fuzzy. But he feels a little flutter of irrational fear anyway, just before his fingers touch down on Mike’s palm. What if he passes right through? Of course, they do touch. Mike is as real and solid as Will. 

Mike’s hand is cool - not cold and lifeless, just chilled, typical of a long walk through the winter woods without gloves - and he guides Will’s hand to the bark of the nearest trunk. 

“And the guy saw you. The truck driver. I promise you you’re not a ghost.”

Will nods jerkily, still a little unbalanced, and rubs his hands together to try to warm them. “And the rest?”

“Well. I’m Mike,” he says again. “Right now I’m working at, uh, Blockbuster.” He goes a little red. “Just - it’s kind of an in-between thing. I just moved back here a couple months ago, and it’s one of those twenty-four-hour places, so... I work the... the night shift. My sister’s always on my back about getting a real career and doing something with my time but lately I just haven’t found something that... really...”

Will is staring at him, not sure if he should be amused or dismayed, and Mike hurries on.

“Uh, anyway. What was the second question?”

“Why did you find me?” Will repeats, monotone. He keeps his voice cold, but Mike’s nervous rambling reassured him a bit. _This_ Mike, this nervous and very human Mike, is easier to talk to than the quiet Mike who moves through the forest landscape just a little too smoothly, footsteps just a little too quiet.

“I just...” Mike gives a little shrug. “I kind of stumbled on you.”

“So you were just out on a walk by the road in the middle of nowhere, at night?”

“Yes.”

“Doing _what_?”

“Just walking. Thinking. I used to live around here, when I was... a kid. Sometimes I wander around to see if it’s changed. I smelled blood and thought maybe somebody hit a deer, but...” He half-lifts a hand towards Will. _It was you._ “And I am really taking you to my house. If that’s okay. There’s a little town with a Pizza Hut and a Blockbuster and some houses and not much else. It’s there. And -”

Will holds up his hands. Mike was starting to answer the other questions - _What the fuck is going on? What are you? What did you do to me?_ \- and all at once, Will isn’t ready for that. He’s overwhelmed as it is, and some ridiculous corner of his brain stubbornly maintains that if neither of them directly acknowledges it, this will all go away. 

_Shower,_ he reminds himself. _Soon you can shower and start today over. And maybe it’ll be better after that._

* * *

It is a little better after the shower.

Not _good._ Not fixed. Will is still floating around in a bubble of disconnect, trying to grasp at reality without much success. But he feels a little more normal now that he’s clean, and now that he’s had some time to think and process and let his brain flush some chemicals out of his system by way of stressed-out tears washed away in the shower. And Mike’s house. That helped.

 _House_ may be too strong of a word. It’s a duplex, and the building wasn’t large to begin with, so Mike’s half is about the size of an apartment. Living room and kitchen downstairs, bedroom and bathroom upstairs. The place was a pretty typical bachelor pad, like somewhere Will and his roommates might live, albeit with decor outdated by a couple decades. Cushy paisley couch. Boxy TV with an Atari on top. Stained glass lamp dangling over the kitchen table. Movie posters filled the living room, some old and some new enough to have been swiped from Blockbuster two days ago. Here and there, a historical artifact stuck out like a sore thumb. A tabletop radio straight out of the 1940s rested on a bookshelf next to _Star Trek_ action figures. The unwashed dishes in the sink looked like the kind of antique china plates people might pay a lot of money for. In contrast, Will found himself doing a double take at the state-of-the-art kitchen appliances and the shiny-new Toyota Corolla sitting by the curb.

Sunny orange goldfish slipped through the water of a ten-gallon aquarium between the kitchen and living room, getting excited when they saw Mike pass by. “Hi guys,” Mike greeted them warmly, chuckling as they whipped back and forth in the water, recognizing their food-giver. “Sorry I’m late. Oh, the shower’s the first door on the left, upstairs.”

Yeah. The shower helped. And being in Mike’s house helped. It still felt a little weird, not quite anchored in time, but it was a _house._ Warm, and bright with noon sunlight filtering through the old-fashioned gauze curtains, and almost _normal._ It made Will feel halfway human again. Being in those woods made him feel unreal, like he was trapped in some New England folktale, or a horror movie. Stepping into Mike’s not-very-clean shower was the first time since the crash that Will felt grounded. 

The car helps, too. That’s another normal thing. Sitting in the passenger seat of Mike’s Corolla, batting at the tacky pair of fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror... This is the most normal Will has felt all day. Despite white-knuckling the door because he can’t stop seeing those last moments before the crash.

They’re on the road, heading for Memorial Hospital. Will is trying not to think about how his borrowed sweatpants and long-sleeved Def Leppard tee smell _very_ much like Mike. Or maybe that’s just Will. He did shower with Mike’s soap and shampoo, after all.

Mike yawns. Hugely. Like a cat. His top lip pulls back just enough to show two slightly-sharper-and-longer-than-usual canines, which Will finds slightly more adorable than he should.

“Sorry,” Mike says with a smaller yawn. “I’m not usually up so late. I’m not gonna crash, promise.”

He cringes apologetically at the wording, but Will is still stuck on _up so late._ It’s 1:00pm.

Mike reaches for a thermos he prepared before they left. When he pops the lid, Will is surprised to smell black coffee. He thought maybe the thing was full of blood, and he was prepared to tactfully ignore it for the whole drive. Or maybe ask for just one sip. Just one.

“So,” he says as Mike takes a drink. “You still drink coffee?”

Mike nods - “Mmhmm -” and then lifts his eyebrows and holds the thermos out to Will. 

Will hesitates, but - screw it. They’ve already performed a bloody version of mouth-to-mouth, what’s a little more swapped spit? 

He almost snorts at his own thoughts, accepting the thermos, and pops the cap. It still smells the same. Cautiously, he sips. What if it tastes like dust or battery acid now? But it’s just the same as he remembers. Hot and rich and bitter. Relieved, Will tilts the thermos back, warming himself with the hot liquid. Why is he constantly so goddamn cold? The shower helped, but now he’s huddling up to the car heating system with cold hands and a chilled nose. It’s like he just can’t keep the heat in his body.

After he caps it again, Will licks his lips and says, “I didn’t know if we could still...” 

He gestures vaguely, even though Mike is looking at the road and not him. 

“Eat food?” Mike fills in, and Will turns to look out the window because all at once he can’t have this conversation while looking at Mike. 

This feels like a boundary - like he can’t go back once he’s acknowledged it out loud. He almost feels silly. Part of him feels like he’ll say too much, and Mike will wrinkle his nose and burst out laughing. _Wait, you actually believed all that? It was just a game, man. Obviously it’s not_ real. _How dumb are you?_

At last, Will just says, “Yeah.” 

“Sure.” Mike takes the thermos back from the cup holder and takes another sip. Something about it makes Will’s stomach flip. It feels so intimate, somehow. Sharing the thermos as if they’ve known each other for years, as if they’re best friends or lovers, when really they’re complete strangers. Mike’s eyebrows pop up as his head tilts. “It just won’t do much for us. It’s not gonna hurt, but it won’t make you any less hungry, either. Caffeine, though -” He taps the thermos with a finger, then slots it back in the cup holder. “Still works. Hallelujah, right?”

_Us._

_It won’t do much for us._

He can’t take it any longer.

“So we’re vampires,” Will says, feeling intensely stupid as soon as he says it.

Mike tilts his head with a non-committal tongue click. “I... yeah. I guess. That’s probably the most accurate word for it.”

Will’s gaze flickers to the passenger side mirror. His reflection is there, hair freshly washed and face a little peaked, wearing Mike’s black band tee. 

“Not like in movies,” Mike says, as if reading Will’s mind.

Well. That’s a place to start.

“Can you read minds?” 

“What?” Mike’s nose wrinkles. “No. What movie’s that from?”

“Nothing, just -”

_Just, you seem to know what I’m thinking before I say it, like we know each other._

“No turning into bats?” Will says, teasing this time because he knows the answer.

“Oh, yeah, we can do that.” Mike waits until Will has turned to look at him, incredulous, before his face breaks into a grin behind his dark sunglasses. “Kidding.” 

Will hits his shoulder. He realizes a half second too late that he probably shouldn’t be horsing around with a stranger like they’re siblings, but Mike just laughs, pleased with himself, and shoves back.

Will turns things over in his head for a few minutes. Thankfully for him, that unreal bubble is back, protecting him from the majority of the shock. If he was in yesterday’s real-life headspace, he doesn’t know if he’d be able to process this. But in today’s new-world-new-life half-reality? Yeah. Sure. Vampires, okay. Makes sense, with the teeth and the blood and the sunburn and the -

“What about sunlight?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s a myth. Well, mostly. I wouldn’t be taking any vacations to the Bahamas if I were you. And wear sunscreen if you go out in the daytime. Seriously. Actually, we probably should have put some on before we left. Oops. But, no, yeah, it won’t kill us. Speaking of, though -” Mike takes one hand off the wheel to fumble at the glove box. He pops it open and says, “There should be an extra pair in there, dig around.” 

Will digs, not sure what he’s looking for until he runs across a pair of big movie-star sunglasses. They’re a little more flashy than he’d usually go for, but he unfolds them quick as lightning and pops them over his eyes with a sigh. 

“Better?” Mike says, and Will flops back in the passenger seat with a groan. 

“ _So_ much better. Goddamn sun.” 

There. Now his eyes don’t hurt and he can actually _see._ He didn’t realize how washed-out everything looked, before, until he filtered out some of the light.

Another question has been prodding at him for several minutes. If he’s being honest, it’s been prodding at him since he woke up in a ditch this morning. And since it appears to be question hour... he may as well.

“Can we die?”

This Mike takes a little longer to answer. When he does speak, it’s slowly, like he’s deliberately planning his words. “There are things that can kill us. Just... time isn’t one of them anymore. And the list is shorter.” 

Will leans forward, morbidly curious. “What’s on the list?” 

“Fire in large quantities. Getting your heart ripped out will do it. Or getting your head chopped off. Basically anything we can’t heal from.” 

“So, kind of like Deadpool.” 

“I was gonna say Wolverine.” 

They glance at each other in the same moment and grin, each learning the same thing about the other at the same time: _ah, he’s a comic nerd._

“What about the whole... silver and stakes thing?” 

“Silver yes - well, kind of. Stakes no. I’m not sure where the whole wooden stake thing came from, honestly. And silver isn’t lethal, it’s more like a bad allergy. I guess anything is lethal if you get stabbed in the heart with it.” 

“Garlic?” 

“Also an allergy.” 

“Fuck.” 

“Yeah,” Mike says, sounding sad. “Spaghetti just ain’t the same.” 

“So,” Will sums up, “I’m now allergic to silver, garlic, and the sun, and I should avoid guillotines.” 

Mike clicks his tongue and does double-finger-guns at him. 

“Please don’t let go of the wheel.” 

He chuckles and resumes driving. “No sun allergy,” he amends. “It’s just damn unpleasant. And you’ll sunburn.” 

“Yeah, I noticed that,” Will grumbles, skimming fingertips over the back of his neck.

Cars sail past on the other side of the highway. Will takes another sip of coffee without bothering to ask. The fuzzy dice sway from the mirror. Finally, Will spits out his last question.

“What do I do now?”

“Say hi to your mom,” Mike says, then glances at him. “And try to stay out of trouble in the hospital.”

Will bats a hand at him _\- yeah, yeah, I’m not a little kid._ “But after that?”

A shrug. “Anything you want.” 

* * *

The drive to the hospital reminds Mike of his own newly-turned car ride. The car and road and surrounding landscape could not be more different, but somehow his mind just keeps being pulled back.

You tend to remember the first time you ever rode in a car. Especially if it occurred the morning after your death.

Mike is, as Nancy loves to remind him, a baby. He’s barely been around for eighty five years total. While his sister may _look_ five years younger than him, she is in fact two hundred years older.

Nancy is a badass. It’s annoying. How is he supposed to compete with someone who cross-dressed as a man to fight in the literal _Revolutionary War_? It’s just not fair. And then of course she graduated to espionage by the time the Civil War rolled around, and then decided she was sick of wars and fucked off into relative obscurity to do journalism for a while. 

He’s not sure how she ended up working as a nurse in the overcrowded, sweltering, stinking hospital where Mike lay dying at age twenty four. She never really explained that part, and he never asked. Maybe she was only posing as a nurse to get some story. Maybe she studied medicine on a lark. Whatever the case, they met. That’s the important part.

It was pneumonia, and Mike wishes the memories would fade faster. Unable to breathe, constantly coughing in great, wet, rib-heaving jolts, muscles aching, a fever like the worst flu he had ever had. His family was moderately wealthy - but they had taken a hit when the economy fell. They were two years into the worst economic depression the country had ever seen, and even Mike’s well-to-do parents were facing bare cupboards. 

They debated for a while whether or not to bring him to a hospital. Hospitals were crowded and, moreover, expensive. By the time Mike was finally admitted, something in him knew it was too late. And sure enough, he didn’t get better. No matter what the doctors and nurses did - and oftentimes it wasn’t much, with the ward so _full_ of pained, dying patients - it only got harder and harder to breathe.

Nurse Wheeler was one of Mike’s favorites. They got to know each other a little, over the weeks. They were like siblings from the start. Mike would play practical jokes on her with what little energy he had left, swiping a pen from her apron while she was distracted or doing impressions to make her swat him but secretly smile. He told her about his baby sister, Holly, and she smiled a little and told him about a younger sibling of her own who died a long time ago. 

To Nancy, she later told him, Mike was like the little brother she hadn’t had in centuries, and he had such obvious verve for life, and he was clearly so genuinely kind... 

_I don’t know how I fooled you,_ he jokes every time she says that. _I must be a better actor than I thought._

One night, near the end, she appeared at his bedside in the ward at a time when she wasn’t usually working. She shook him awake gently, and then put a finger to her lips and showed him a notepad where she had written, _I know a way to heal you, but it will cost everything._ Mike wrote back that he didn’t have any money; his parents hadn’t been in to visit him since he was admitted. She wrote back that it didn’t cost money. 

And with nothing to lose and a desperate wish to stay alive no matter the cost, Mike agreed.

There was one hitch.

Nancy once turned a boyfriend of hers, when she was a young immortal in the American Revolution. Mike never even learned his name. She doesn’t like to speak it. He just knows the story, and the story goes that she wanted to be with him forever. She didn’t want him to age and die without her. But he turned into a monster. He wasn’t the kind of person that took near-invincibility and immortality gracefully. He quickly started to think of everyone else as beneath him, that he was some sort of god among ants. 

And it didn’t get better. Over the decades, he only grew more and more power-hungry and bloodthirsty, and Nancy had long since broken up with him when she realized she would have to kill the monster she had created.

So she did. 

Mike hasn’t heard much about that part of the story. He doesn’t know exactly how she did it or what it cost her; all he knows is that she did it. And that afterwards, she swore to herself that she would never turn anyone else, ever. Age and death existed for a reason. At best, immortality was a curse; at worst, it created nearly unstoppable evil. 

And she kept that promise for over a hundred years, even preventing others like her from turning humans... until she met Mike. And he struck her as such an empathetic and well-meaning soul that she couldn’t possibly imagine him going dark as an immortal. But still, when she scooped him up with unexpected strength, bedsheets and all, and carried him swiftly and silently out of the hospital ward and across the grounds to a waiting car, she made him swear something on his grandmother’s grave, on his very soul. 

“You must never turn anyone else,” she had said, her face narrow and pale in the darkness and very close to his own as she laid him gently in the passenger seat of her Wescott. Already this was strange; Mike had never ridden in a car before in his life. He was a small-town kid, and when he visited the city, he took a train. Never a car. _Nobody_ he knew was rich enough to afford a car, not even his parents.

Nancy stared into his eyes, stone-cold serious - so serious that he couldn’t bring himself to laugh at or question the sudden old-fashioned affectations that snuck into her voice. 

“You understand me, Michael? You can never do this to another soul. Not one. Or I’ll have no choice but to kill you both. Say you understand.” 

Mike was caught in a spasm of coughing, scooping up the bedsheet to catch a gout of red mucus before he managed, “Wha-at are you going to d-do?” 

She circled to the driver’s seat while he broke down again, turning the cloth bunched in his fists red with flecks of his disintegrating lungs. When he quieted, wheezing a little, weak and shivering violently with fever and with the cool night air, she said, “I’m going to give you a choice. You can keep your life, but you’ll lose everything that makes it mean anything. Understand?” 

“No,” Mike whispered, nearly vibrating with fever-chill, and she shook her head. 

“You’ll live. But you’ll probably wish you hadn’t, eventually.” 

“I -” 

“Do you still want to go through with it?” 

Mike thought for a moment, head spinning slowly. He couldn’t get any air into his lungs, no matter how hard he struggled. It had been harder and harder to breathe all day, all week, all month, and now he knew it was a matter of hours if not minutes before his lungs simply ceased taking in oxygen, and he’d fight to stay conscious while his vision slowly darkened. It made his heart race and his veins flood with cold adrenaline just to think about. He was surrounded with fresh air and he was drowning. 

“Will I,” he tried to say, cleared his throat, and tried again in a painful and strained whisper. “Will I still be sick?” 

Nancy was usually very stoic, cool and aloof as a marble statue until she smiled, but now Mike saw an unprecedented twist of sadness crumple her face. She didn’t even bother to smooth it out as she took a short, unsteady breath. 

“No,” she said, low but firm. “You’ll never be sick again.” 

Mike meant to give it a few minutes’ thought, but his hands had started to go cold and tingly again from low circulation, and a spike of panic made him give a jerky nod. He was afraid that if he waited any longer to make up his mind, he’d die while he was still thinking about it.

She told him to close his eyes, so he did. When the two needles pushed deep into his neck, he tried to stay still and be good, because he wanted to give this the best chance of working that he could - whatever _this_ was. He didn’t panic until he opened his eyes out of curiosity - and saw that the pain in his throat wasn’t a pair of thick needles at all, but Nurse Wheeler’s teeth dug into his jugular. 

That’s when he started to struggle, gasping to scream, confused and filled with an instinctual animal terror, but he was too weak to fight. He could only give a faint jerk, lungs stuttering, and then suddenly her face lifted again and she locked her eyes onto his, her face unchanged and yet completely different. She pierced the largest vein of her own wrist as he watched, eyes misty with dazed horror, and shoved her pale, slender arm at him. 

“What’re you -” he rasped, but she cut him off. 

“Drink,” she said flatly. “Or die. Your choice.” 

So he drank, choking on the liquid and coughing, groaning with pain as his spasms aggravated the puncture wounds in his neck. The dizziness worsened until the car was spinning at breakneck speed around him, and the moisture in his eyes turned to shaky, shallow sobs, and Nancy broke away from his throat to talk him through the terror. 

“That’s it,” she said, “You’re done. That’s enough, you can stop now. You just have to wait. You’ll feel better soon. I promise. You’re my brother now, all right? You’re Michael Wheeler now. I’ll take care of you.” 

It was one of the last things he heard before the cold and the heat gripped him, worse than his fever had ever been, and his lungs burned like he’d breathed acid, and he coughed up what felt like half a gallon of fluid and chunks of flesh into his hands. And when he woke up at dawn the next morning, his sister was beside him, steering the rickety little car through a dewy countryside, still wearing her white nurse dress blotched red down the front with Mike’s blood. She took him hunting as the sky turned pink.

She kept a very close watch on him, in those first few years. He came to resent her pretty quickly, snapping and snarling at her for constantly hovering over his shoulder, but as a couple decades passed their relationship moved to smoother waters. She eventually accepted that he wasn’t likely to go mad with power and go on a killing spree, and he eventually came to understand and forgive her overprotective paranoia. But to this day, she still occasionally jokes about killing him if she needs to. 

Now, as Mike has a bizarre moment of déjà vu, driving along a quiet road the day after a turning, he glances at his own turn. Will’s eyes are open behind his heart-shaped sunglasses, but his head is pillowed on his seatbelt and he’s clearly slipping. Mike doesn’t blame him. Not only is it past 1:00 in the afternoon, but today has been... a lot.

He’s been trying not to show it, but he’s worried. He couldn’t say for sure how serious Nancy still is about his promise, about her threat. And he doesn’t want to have to fight his sister - partly because his chances of winning are not stellar.

But that’s a problem for later. There’s no way Nancy could know about Will this early. There’s been no time for word to even _begin_ to travel, and anyway, she might be sleeping. The old lady occasionally sleeps through whole months at a time, and he hasn’t heard from her in a while. She’s probably curled up with her girlfriend in some fancy old house on the fringes of a city, snoozing the winter away.

They have time.

For now, Mike’s Priority One is finding Will’s mom, and providing comfort as best he can if she turns up in a body bag.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It seems I'm on a roll with this. It's past midnight and I have to get up at 6:00 for work, and I spent a good chunk of today writing instead of working, lol  
> I'd love to hear any and all of your thoughts!


	4. Visiting Hours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I couldn't figure out how to describe the typical early 90s haircut, like DiCaprio and Edward Furlong, but. Basically that.

When Mike first saw Will, half his face looked more like a cut of deli meat than human features. His eyes were swollen and clouded, and his hair was stained black and plastered down with blood. He healed overnight, of course, and Mike got a peek at his real features, but he was still bone-pale and gaunt and covered in a layer of grime and blood and bodily fluids. Now that Will has eaten and showered and gotten a bit of rest, Mike finds himself glancing into the passenger seat all too often. 

Either Will has nodded off or he’s most of the way there, so he doesn’t notice Mike’s clandestine observation. 

Mike now knows that, free of the bloodshot death-haze that clouded them last night, Will’s eyes are a muddled and intriguing hazel. Soft brown in some lights, muddy green in others, and sometimes an unnamable mix of both. His face has regained a tiny bit of color. He’s still pale - and will likely remain so, if his original skin tone and his newly acquired disagreement with the sun are any indicator - but he’s no longer the paper-white, sickly apparition that scared the pants off of a tow truck driver this morning. His skin has regained just a touch of pigment - not to mention the strawberry-red sunburn that has spread like a stain over the tops of his cheeks, the bridge of his nose, the back of his neck and the tops of his arms. Freshly washed, his hair is a medium brown, the swept-back bangs longer than the hair at the nape of his neck. Mike vaguely remembers similar styles from the young stars of recent movies, and suddenly wonders if his own haircut is outdated. Probably. He’s starting to reach the point where the decades go by fast.

And Will is attractive. 

It’s not like Mike can help noticing that. Will’s face isn’t square-jawed or rugged like the men in magazines with muscles and smoldering eyes, but it carries its own kind of quiet strength and loveliness. He has a straight, slightly upturned nose, cupid’s bow lips, and straight, dark brows. A small dimple appears on one side of his mouth when he smiles especially wide, and two moles just beside his Adam's apple appear like a miniature bite mark. His newly turned fangs, needle-sharp as kitten’s teeth, are just barely visible. Bright-white, they stand out against the flesh of his lower lip where they peek out from underneath the upper. He’s probably getting hungry again, thinking about food in his sleep. New turns burn through a lot of calories, and who knows how much energy it’ll take before Will’s body completely recovers from what happened to him yesterday. They’ll have to stop and find a proper meal before entering the hospital or all hell will break loose.

Mike fixes his eyes resolutely on the road. He can’t do this. He’s not doing this. He is _not_ going to crush on this guy. It’s completely inappropriate; Will is at a distinct power disadvantage right now. He has no idea what’s going on. Mike will functionally have to act as his mentor for a while. And, Mike reminds himself, though he feels twenty four - maybe twenty five, by now - he’s not. Another fifteen years and he’ll be a century old. He can’t be crushing on a new turn. The playing field is just too uneven.

But he can tell he’s getting his hopes up anyway. Which is bad. It’s just, he only recently started allowing himself to feel things like that in the first place. And now that he gave those feelings an inch, they took a mile. His stupid, wistful heart already has one foot in hope and another in inevitable disappointment.

For a long time after he turned, Mike thought that living forever meant he’d have to keep himself secret for just as long. Not the teeth; no, he wasn’t nearly as worried about that. His worry was centered around something inside him that had existed long before the bloodthirst. And for decades, he did hide it. Immortal doesn’t mean free of consequence. Fangs and eating habits aside, Mike lived with the constant knowledge that if anyone found out who he really was, he’d be a pariah. He’d lose any and all of the hard-won relationships he had built. He could be run out of town. He could lose everything, and that doesn’t hurt any less just because you have uncounted years to start over. More time just means a higher chance that it will happen again, and again. 

So despite his wandering eyes and quiet, longing curiosities, Mike stuck to girls. And that was all right, that was good, he _likes_ girls. And he thought maybe he’d get used to ignoring his other affections, maybe they’d fade if he pushed them down, but they didn’t. Rather than atrophying away to nothing like an unused muscle, they just turned hopeless and bitter inside him. He can remember every single detail of the first night he finally snapped. The guy he kissed was red-haired, human, and endlessly amused by Mike’s bashful inexperience. He was what the more vulgar immortals might call a _bloodbag:_ the rare humans who both know of immortals’ existence _and_ go so far as to offer themselves up as sustenance. They’re usually the young thrill-seeking kind, and this one was no exception. Mike remembers him goading Mike to bite him, plying him with kisses until he was peppered with shallow puncture wounds.

Mike met him three more times after the first, always more eager at the prospect of kisses than feeding. But he couldn’t bring himself to toe the waters of a real relationship. The walls he had built up in his own head were just too high to hurdle. It would take decades longer before he could even begin to dismantle them, brick by brick. And besides, the guy was human. Mike had a couple girlfriends here and there, over the years, but romances between humans and monsters don’t tend to work out well for the human. And of the few immortals that exist, even fewer would consider Mike as a potential romantic partner. He’s eighty five, and was even younger back then. He’s barely even an adult, by his kind’s standards. Immature and inexperienced and uppity. 

But before Mike could make up his mind about his on-again off-again bedmate, the guy disappeared. Mike would later learn that he had been drafted into Vietnam, where he stepped on a land mine and disengaged with existence rather suddenly and in many small, wet pieces.

Mike, for his part, fell back on the comfortable familiarity of loneliness. He focused on other things, and he told himself he didn’t need a partner. He was busy. He had time to worry about that later. He was fine. His thoughts turned frequently and pathetically to kisses and cuddling and sex and dates, road trips and Sunday mornings together. But he was fine. He had his sister, and his friends, and he was occupied with other things.

And then something magical happened. People like him started coming out of the woodwork, all at once, like they’d all heard the same call. Not other immortals, but human men and women like him, men and women that wanted and needed more than the punishing binary they had been given. There were riots, protests, marches. And year by year, decade by decade, Mike watched the world begin to change. 

That’s one of the things that gives him hope. He _could_ have a boyfriend, now, and... well, people would have a thing or two to say, and they’d have to be cautious like always, but they could _do_ it. Mike has spent decades fighting and then coming to terms with himself, and now that he’s finally gotten to a place where he’s at peace with that part of himself, it’s _actually possible._ There are books and movies and magazines for people like him, there are people like him on TV, making music and giving speeches and changing the course of history. Sometimes he walks past a gay or lesbian couple on the street, openly holding hands, even kissing. There are people in court houses and offices of the government fighting tooth and nail for equality and justice. There are people, young and old, who wear their flag colors on pins and patches, like it’s not something that should be kept quiet. It’s almost too good to be true. 

Sometimes the world isn’t so bad.

And now, Will. 

It’s like a cruelly ironic joke from the universe. _Oh, you’re okay with yourself now? Boom. Have a crush that you can’t possibly act on. Deal with it._

Mike _knows_ it’s completely inappropriate - Will is his turn, he should be like a little brother to Mike as Mike was to Nancy - but something in the back of his mind can’t help but perk up a little. 

_Here’s someone like you,_ it whispers. _Not a human, but not an old immortal, either. He’s like you. And he’s generous, and funny, and likes some of the things that you like. Maybe there’s a chance._

Mike shoves the thought down. _Brothers,_ he reminds himself firmly. _You’re like brothers._

Anyway, the plain and simple statistics of attraction make it unlikely that Will would even _want_ a boyfriend, even outside of the whole turning business. And _even_ if he is into guys, the chances of him being into Mike specifically are slimmer still. So, that’s that. 

Mike reaches out to fold down the sun visor, blocking the rays from his sleeping companion’s face, and a bit of tension eases from Will’s features.

* * *

The hospital is about as close to hell on Earth as Will has gotten. The fluorescent lights make everything look bleached and overexposed, the light glaring off of _everything_ and seeming to bloom across his vision like a stark, burning stain. Blue and purple afterimages drift constantly in his field of view. Two minutes in and he wants to smash every light in the building. He can’t fucking see. Everything is a white-blue blur, and he’s nearly crashed into something twice since they came in here. It’s like groping around in the dark, except that this is worse because it makes the backs of his eyes ache. He’s _this_ close to putting the sunglasses back on, judgemental strangers be damned.

And that’s not even to mention the smell. It’s so prevalent and overpowering that it’s tipping the boundary into a stench. Copper, tin, salt, sweat, latex, acidic disinfectant, clinical plastic and metal. It makes him want to retch, or at least pinch his nostrils shut. And the sheer abundance of pulsing heartbeats around him is... trying. The combined result is a kind of nauseated, cranky hunger that won’t go away. He has to concentrate hard to keep his teeth from showing - and his stomach from rebelling.

He won’t admit it - not in a million years - but it’s a good thing Mike made them stop to eat before they came in. It was squirrel, this time. 

Will never wants to taste squirrel ever again in his life.

But as Mike said apologetically, it was the best he could do so close to a city, and they didn’t have time to scout out some scumbag human who deserved their fate. 

Will wouldn’t have been ready for that anyway. Not nearly. He doesn’t think he could face the sight of a terrified, struggling human person - or worse, a limp body - no matter what atrocities they had committed and no matter how hungry he was. And the last thing Will wanted was to lose control in the middle of a hospital, _especially_ around his mom. So, squirrels it was. 

They were like the worst, filthiest, gamiest Capri Sun pouches. He’s getting sicker just thinking about it.

But they’re not here for him. They’re here for the patient in Room 204B, whose head snaps up when he hovers at the doorway and says, “Hey, Mom.”

“Oh, Will -” Joyce wavers, clawing her way out of the hospital bed and rushing forward on one socked foot and one enormous cast, and just like that Will doesn’t mind putting up with the fluorescent lights and the hospital-stench. “Oh, my baby -”

She half-falls against him, sobbing, and Will tries to keep her weight off the cast, and tries not to notice the very faint scent of blood that hangs around her, most likely originating from underneath the bandages on her arm and shoulder. When she lifts her head, he can make out a suspiciously steering-wheel-shaped bruise on her temple. It’s clearly visible even through the washed-out haze that plagues his vision.

“Where were you?” she rasps, and her hands move to his shoulders and give him a little shake. “Where were you? They went back to look for you, once I woke up and told them, but they couldn’t -” Her voice breaks and her hands move from his shoulders to his cheeks, like he’s a little kid again. “They couldn’t _find_ you. They didn’t know where you were.” 

“I -”

How does he answer this? He glances to Mike for help, hoping he hasn’t disappeared, and sure enough Mike is still there. He’s been waiting in the hallway, respectfully pretending not to listen to what’s going on. Now as Joyce follows Will’s line of sight, Mike takes a step forward.

“Ma’am,” he says, giving a head nod that might almost be half a bow.

“Hi,” Joyce mumbles, going for a handshake though she seems embarrassed about her appearance. Hospital gown, greasy hair, sallow skin.

“Mike, uh,” Will says, glancing again between them. _Help,_ he says with his eyes, but Mike just looks at him expectantly.

Face turned away from his mother, Will half-opens his mouth to press his tongue to one sharp tooth, lifting his eyebrows in a question. Mike gives a subtle head shake.

Turning back, Will lies. “Mike found me wandering down the road. I guess maybe I hit my head and got out of the car somehow, I’m not sure. Maybe I thought I was going to get help or something.”

“I thought maybe he was hitchhiking,” Mike says, stepping in smoothly. “I stopped to see if everything was okay.”

Will takes the baton. “Good thing he did, or I might have wandered halfway to Chicago by now.” 

He gives a small grin, trying to sell the lie. It wasn’t a very good one, but his mother seems so relieved that she doesn’t so much as question it.

“Why didn’t you call?” Her eyes go misty again as she frowns up at him. He outgrew her years ago, and he still hasn’t gotten used to looking down at her. “Will, they thought - I thought -”

“I didn’t know where you were,” he protests. “I didn’t know if they had taken you to a hospital, or a doctor’s office, or - look, let’s sit. Don’t stand on your leg.”

She probably shouldn’t be standing at all. Plus, she’s still attached to an IV, which is now stretched dangerously across the room. Will guides her back to the bed, trying not to tangle the line, and helps her get her right leg back up onto the mattress. How she _walked_ on that thing, he has no idea.

“How did you get burned?”

“Huh?”

She lifts a hand, dabbing her fingertips gently over the worst of the sunburn on his cheeks. “Ooh, ouch,” she hisses empathetically. “That doesn’t look good.”

He straightens and backs up a step, removing himself a degree from the faint smell of blood. Of course she’d be worried about his sunburn while she’s lying in a hospital bed with an IV in her arm and her leg encased in plaster. “I’m okay. It’s just a sunburn.”

She tuts. “How’d you get so sunburned in the winter?” Thankfully, her eyes then turn to Mike. She looks even more sickly, after getting up when she definitely wasn’t supposed to, but her voice is strong and genuine when she says, “Thank you.”

Mike tries to wave it away, but she won’t let him.

“If you hadn’t found him -” She shakes her head, settling back on her pillows with a tired grimace. “Who knows what kind of monster could have picked him up.”

“Mom,” Will grumbles. She’s talking like he’s some five year old at risk of kidnapping.

Meanwhile, Mike is mumbling something about _not a big deal, least I could do,_ and Joyce is looking him over.

“Your name’s Mike?” she says.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

She looks at him steadily. “You have a good heart, Mike.”

Before Mike can protest again, the door squeaks. Will turns, expecting a nurse or doctor, and instead is body-slammed off his feet by his brother.

“Will,” Jonathan says, crushing the life out of Will in a bear hug. "Oh, my god. Thank god. You're okay."

“Can’t breathe,” Will wheezes. He shoves at Jonathan, starting to panic. It reminds him too much of struggling to inhale in the ditch by the side of the road. “Can’t breathe, can’t breathe.” Jonathan lets go, and Will sucks in a breath. “Hey.”

“What happened to your face?” Jonathan frowns, as if really looking at Will for the first time. “What are you wearing?”

* * *

For a few minutes there, Will’s family was so relieved that he wasn’t dead that they didn’t seem to question how he walked away from a car crash with nothing but a sunburn. But after a few minutes, Jonathan started frowning over him again, asking increasingly dangerous questions. 

_Are you feeling all right? Did you break anything? You hit your head? Did you get it checked out? You need to get that checked out. I’m serious, Will, concussions are dangerous. Where have you been for the past sixteen hours? Did you stay at Mike’s? Was he acting weird? Did he try anything? Have you eaten? Have you slept? You look like you’re about to pass out, are you okay?_

Will tells him that he’s pretty sore, that he didn’t break anything, that he got his head checked out at a doctor’s office in Mike’s town this morning, that he stayed with Mike last night and, no, nothing happened. He says that he’s eaten and slept and he’s just feeling a little woozy.

Out of the grab bag of truth and lies, that last one rings the most true. Will isn’t feeling too hot. The acid-white-green fluorescent lights, flickering so fast it’s barely perceptible to the human eye, have given him a murderous cluster headache just behind his right eye. Nurses keep coming in and out, scolding Joyce for getting out of bed and examining her leg to see if she damaged it any further, and the constant influx of body heat and heartbeats and scents is making Will tense as a wire. He has to concentrate hard just to keep acting normal, fighting not to slip into an animal-like headspace, and it’s an increasingly uphill battle.

“Will?” Someone touches his arm and Will jumps a little, trying to focus and struggling to see through the miasma of awful light. “Shit,” Jonathan says. “Are you okay? You should sit down, c’mere -”

But all Will can feel is the kick of his brother’s heartbeat where his hand rests on Will’s arm, and he has to wrench himself away. They’ve attracted the attention of a nurse in sky-blue scrubs, they’re crowding around him and Will has to get out. The smell of blood is everywhere. Flame-hot and fast-flowing under skin, each body in front of him giving off a _slightly_ different scent. But it’s all blood. Not animal blood, either, but _human_ blood, which Will hasn’t even tasted yet, and, oh, he wants to.

He knows, with a horrible certainty, exactly what’s about to happen if he stays. It’s as clear as a postcard in his mind, each event playing out with grim conviction.

Eyes fixed on the floor, one hand covering his nose and mouth in a weak attempt to block the smell - and hide the teeth that he can’t hold in anymore - Will gropes blindly for the door. He can’t see. It’s too bright. His eyes ache and the headache pierces his brain like a needle, and Jonathan and the nurse are trying to guide him back into the room towards a chair but he yanks out of their grip and picks up his pace.

Without even looking, he knows Mike is walking towards him. He left for a few minutes there, searching for a bathroom and making himself scarce, but now Will can pick out Mike’s scent from the overwhelming muddle of human scents behind him. Eyes screwed shut, he reaches out a hand towards the one heartbeat that doesn’t make him want to abandon control and rip open a throat. He’s braced on the doorframe, one hand still clamped over his nose and mouth while the well-meaning nurse tries to pry it away to see what’s wrong. 

_Come on, come on,_ Will thinks. Five more seconds and he swears he doesn’t give a shit anymore, he can’t wait anymore.

Mike’s footsteps pick up, louder now, and then a hand grips Will’s.

Relief weighs down on Will like a heavy quilt, muffling some of the frantic anxiety.

“Hey,” Mike says, too casual. “You done?”

“‘M done,” Will confirms, his voice muffled behind his hand. “I need to go.”

“Yup.” Mike starts moving immediately, bracing an arm around Will’s shoulders when Will’s knees buckle for a second. “We’re going. Here we go.”

They ignore the nurse and Jonathan both protesting, following them, but Will turns back at the sound of his mother’s voice.

“Will?” From what he can see, she’s sitting forward in bed, trying to see through the doorway. “Sweetie, are you okay? What’s going on?” 

She moves like she’s about to get up again, and the nurse miraculously abandons Will to keep her from moving.

“I’ll call,” he says from behind his hand, struggling to speak around the teeth. “I’ll call you. Soon. Promise.”

With the nurse busy with Joyce, they take the opportunity and make a break for it. Will, exhausted from fighting the animal in his mind, lets go. He gives up on intelligent thought and focuses on just breathing, trying to let the sickening hospital-hallway smell purge the scent of blood from his lungs. He’s vaguely aware of Jonathan first pleading with him and then beginning to yell at Mike, something about _what did you do to him?_ and _get your hands off my little brother, you -_

They’ve reached the elevator, limping inside as Mike struggles to contain the increasing strength of Will’s thrashing, because damnit he’s _hungry_ and he doesn’t _want_ to get into the elevator, there are _so many_ living bodies in this building and if he could just -

The scene is devolving quickly into chaos, with Jonathan yelling for security and trying to shove into the elevator with them and Mike trying to keep Jonathan out _and_ keep Will from breaking free and going for the nearest living heartbeat, and the last remnant of humanity in the back of Will’s brain whispers, _Well, this is going well._ Then that thought is consumed, too, and as the human in front of them once again blocks the elevator from closing, Mike yells something - and is rewarded with a punch to the cheekbone. 

Before even making the decision to lunge forward, Will is already there, baring his teeth and hissing deep in his throat at this enemy who _dared_ hurt Will’s mate. The human jerks backwards, stumbling, and Will is poised to strike when Mike’s arm locks around his waist and his hand slams down on the _close door_ button. Annoyed, Will struggles against Mike’s arm, but his priority has shifted on a dime from feeding to protecting. He snarls at their enemy once more, just for good measure - _stay the fuck back -_ and the elevator door closes on the image of the human’s shocked face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you get hangry and accidentally forget who your brother is and try to murder him ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> As always, I would love to hear your thoughts!


	5. Sleep Schedules

“I’m sorry.”

Will scrubs his hands over his face. They’ve been on the road again for several miles already, and Will has spent most of them in a mortified silence. Now, as he speaks up, Mike glances over from the driver’s seat.

“You were right. That was a bad idea.” His memories of leaving the hospital are vague, impressionistic, but he remembers that - “He saw me.”

He looks to Mike, but Mike has his eyes on the road, listening. He gives a nod and a little shrug when Will trails off.

“What do we do?” Will presses.  _ Shrug _ isn’t an answer. “I m- is that okay? Does that... happen? A lot? Or sometimes, or...?”

“It’s not great,” Mike admits, and Will sits back in his seat with a huff. He knew it. “ _ But, _ ” Mike says, “Thankfully he was the  _ only _ one that saw you. People don’t tend to believe isolated witnesses. If a lot of people see you, or if it happens repeatedly, that’s when it starts getting hard to show your face around town. And if you  _ really _ start stirring up shit, you might get a hunter after you, but -” He shrugs again, this time looking uncomfortable. “You’d have to make a real concentrated effort to be enough of an asshole for that to happen. They usually only go after the worst of the worst. Just don’t go on a serial killing spree and you’ll be fine. Oh, son of a - yeah, nice signal, asshole!”

The truck that cut them off revs away in an oily cough of exhaust, too impatient to limit themselves to five miles over the speed limit.

Mike mutters something uncharitable, but it sounds canned. Like he’s putting on a show, trying to steer conversation in a different direction. He’s worried about something.

“Have you ever had one of those?”

“What?”

“A hunter?”

“After me? No.”

He’s being uncharacteristically terse, and Will gives up on conversation in favor of watching the dark banks of trees on either side of the road. Every once in a while the trees will become abruptly smaller and fewer between, and then a stubbly field swoops into sight behind them before forest closes in again. The median is wide and yellow-gray with dead grass and slush, and the sky is overcast - a welcome reprieve from the glare of the sun. They pass through a tiny town, which is really more of a glorified truck stop. Gas stations, fast food restaurants, a hotel, a convenience store. The roads are damp. Tiny flecks of moisture begin to appear on the windshield.

At last, Will gives voice to what he’s been thinking all day. “What happens now?”

Mike looks over for a moment, as if surprised that Will didn’t know. “Oh. Well I figured we could just head home. My place, I mean. We both really need some sleep, we’ve been up almost all day.”

“No, I mean -” Will gestures vaguely at himself, then realizes Mike is looking at the road. “To me.”

He asked earlier -  _ what do I do now? Anything you want. _ \- but that’s not a real answer. What he really wants to ask is,  _ What about the rest of the semester? What about my apartment and my roommates? My plans? My things? My family? I can’t ever go back to my old life, can I? So what do I do? What do I do? _

_ Oh, god, what do I do? _

He swipes his finger around buttons on the dash, wiping off the dust in meandering patterns. Mike’s right; he needs some sleep. His brain feels throbbing-heavy, eyes swollen and itching like he’s been pulling a caffeine-fueled all-nighter to finish a paper. His finger pulls tracks and patterns into the dust. Circle, circle, loop, infinity.

What does he  _ want  _ to do? What  _ could  _ he do? Infinite time... well, maybe not  _ infinite, _ but a whole lot more than he used to have. No more race to the finish line. He thinks about things he’s always wanted to do, life experiences he never really expected to afford or have time for. Like spending a decade in New York or travelling to Europe or going backpacking or learning a language or an instrument or even going back to college. He doesn’t have to decide on a major anymore, he could get as many degrees as he wants. He could get as many  _ PhD _ s as he wants. Well, except that all of that takes money. A penniless immortal in New York is still penniless, just... forever. Maybe that’s why Mike lives in a shabby duplex in a nothing-town. Human or not, there’s no escaping rent money. But with hundreds of years on his hands, surely he’ll be able to find a way to earn some money, right? His asshole dad was always on about stock markets, maybe that’s worth a try - although anything reminiscent of Lonnie leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

Mike’s tongue clicks as he opens his mouth, but he doesn’t speak for a few moments. When he does, it’s halting. “You... should probably stay with me for a bit. While you get used to everything. I mean, if that’s okay. I don’t want you to feel like,  _ oh, he’s my only option, _ no, I’m sure there’s - I mean, I know there are hostels for people like us, here and there, you could always...” He’s starting to ramble again, a habit which Will is coming to recognize as Mike’s nervous tic. He notices Will watching him and glances away quickly, stumbling the next word. “M-most of them are Europe, though, but I’m sure there’s -”

“I don’t mind staying with you.”

“You sure? I’m glad to have you,” he rushes to clarify, “I’ve actually been kinda missing having roommates. Sometimes it’s like, I’ll see my coworkers and then I’ll see my fish, and that’s it. Gets kinda...” Noncommittal gesture, wrinkled nose.

Will jumps in, heading off the train of thought before it becomes a string of uncertain run-ons. “I don’t mind.” 

His mouth opens to form the  _ I  _ in  _ I trust you, _ but that feels like too much to say, so he closes his teeth on the vowel. He doesn’t say  _ I feel like we’ve known each other for a long time, _ either, because that’s just stupid, even if it’s true. Plus, he’s already mortified himself enough today. He cringes once again at the vague, blurry memory of pressing his mouth to Mike’s to drink rabbit blood from his lips -  _ god you’re such an idiot, why did you do that, stupid stupid stupid  _ \- and in Will’s silence, Mike’s head twists to glance at him before looking back to the road.

“Well.” Mike gives an exaggerated nod, like he’s saying,  _ that’s settled, then, _ pushing past the awkwardness with humor. “Very well, then. Onwards, to hearth and home!”

Will shoots him a  _ you are such a dork _ look.

The fuzzy dice bob and swing from the rearview mirror. Will read, once, about how World War II pilots used to put a pair of dice on their instrument panel, seven pips side-up for good luck. Because, with hundreds of planes going down every week, every flight was a roll of the dice. Nobody ever knew who would be coming back to land. Of course, by now the dice are just decoration. A diluted cultural echo of a bloodier place and time. Oversized and fuzzy, swinging from the rearview mirror and giving a cheerful jiggle every time they hit a bump.

“I wanna learn an instrument,” Will blurts, realizing too late that Mike wasn’t privy to the train of thought that would have given the statement context.

But Mike just says, “Okay.”

“And visit Europe. Eventually.”

Mike smiles a little. “Anything else?”

_ Go to Pride, _ Will wants to say, but... he can’t give that away. Not this soon, not even to Mike, not even with the inexplicable and very real bond that formed between them the moment Will tasted his blood. He’s more confident now than he was in high school, sure, but... you never know. You never really know how somebody is gonna react. And Mike was born... when  _ was _ Mike born? Fifty years ago? A hundred? Two hundred, longer? Anyway, Mike is an immortal. And if the brown jacket is anything to go by, he’s been an adult since at least the early ‘70s. Which means he can’t have been born later than 1950. Which means Will has to be careful. Mike might have grown up when queers like Will were ostracized or sent to asylums or worse. He doesn’t want to find out if that’s still Mike’s worldview. 

After all, kissing in the forest over two dead rabbits is one thing, living with a queer day in and day out is quite another.

Will snorts at himself and Mike misconstrues it as a response to his own question.

“What? C’mon, say it.”

“I wanna be an artist. I mean, for real. For a living.” He still feels silly saying it, but it’s easier than saying the other things in his head. And then, just to be thorough, “And tell my dad he’s a piece of shit.”

Mike gives a sympathetic chuckle. “Here, here.”

“You too?”

He hesitates a moment, as if deciding how much to say, and then his shoulders twitch in a shrug. “My parents left me to die in a pneumonia ward.”

A beat of startled silence as Will takes this in.

“Wow.”

“Yup.”

He’s trying to do the math. When was the last time that pneumonia was a real threat? Do people still die of pneumonia? “Uh... when?” he ventures.

“Nineteen thirty one. I know. I’m old.”

“I mean, I was expecting maybe the middle ages or something, so...” Will deflects, and meanwhile he’s thinking,  _ hahahaha, fuck. _ Weren’t asylums a big thing back then? Then again, Mike has had six decades since to change his mind...

Mike gives a disgruntled scoff. “I’m not  _ that  _ old!” His head tilts. “My sister, on the other hand...”

They both laugh, and then Mike shakes his head.

“She’s actually not that old.”

“How old is she?”

“Uh... Two hu...? No, wait. Mid seventeen hundreds, eighteen, nineteen, plus forty... Two hundred and forty five? Six? She crossdressed to fight in the revolutionary war, if that tells you anything. Still has some of her old uniform, somewhere.”

Will whistles. “What a life.”

“Oh, she’s insufferable. She’s one of those Accomplished people with a capital-A that’s always ten times as productive as you without even trying. She’s done journalism, medicine, I’m pretty sure she was a spy at least once...”

“So, wait.” More math. “She’s your sis...ter...?”

“Well, not by birth. She turned me.”

“Oh. Right.” He starts to say,  _ guess that makes us brothers then, huh? _ but it doesn’t feel right even as he thinks it. So instead he says, “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What have you been up to all this time?”

“Oh.” Short, sharp pause. When Will glances over, Mike is entirely absorbed in passing a slow SUV, flicking on the wipers as flecks of moisture start to thicken on the windshield. His eyes slide to the dice hanging from the mirror, but he doesn’t turn all the way to make eye contact. “Not much.” He gives a self-conscious huff of laughter. “Been reading a lot, I guess. Wandering around. I told you, Nancy’s insufferable. She’s impossible to live up to.”

Will can tell there’s more to the story, but Mike is clearly a little embarrassed, so he lets it go with a stifled yawn.

“Almost there,” Mike says, then catches the yawn himself. “Damnit, you gave it to me.”

“Good, keep it.”

The drizzle thickens to a hard, cold rain, and then to soft sleet, and the rhythmic  _ squeak-whoosh _ of the windshield wipers fills the last leg of their drive back to the house.

* * *

Light is burning through the cracks in the curtains when the heavy knock pulls Mike out of sleep. He sits halfway up with one eye open, scowling over the back of the couch. The half-moon of frosted glass at the top of the door is dark with the shadow of somebody’s head.

He flops back down onto the couch cushions, hoping they’ll just deliver a package and leave, or go try to sell magazines to someone else. But a moment later they knock again, louder this time, and a familiar gruff voice calls, “Wake up, kid. I know you’re in there.”

Sighing heavily, Mike untangles himself from the cocoon and rubs his face on the way to the door. He has to shield his eyes with a hand when he cracks it open, grimacing at the acid-ache of direct sunlight.

“It’s the middle of the day,” he grouches.

The police chief just fixes him with an unimpressed stare, then pulls out a palm-sized notebook. He flips to the latest page and skims whatever’s scribbled there. “You been to Memorial Hospital lately?” he says without preamble.

“Uh.”

Mike’s sudden tension tells all, and Hopper sighs. “Look, don’t worry. I’ve got it handled. But you’re not making my job any easier by menacing random civilians.”

“That’s not what -”

“‘Cause we had a deal? Right?”

Mike folds his palm down over his eyes like a shutter, taking a reprieve from the sun. “Right. Yes, sir.”

“You can’t be doing shit like that.”

“Nobody got hurt -”

“If hospitals are gonna set you off, don’t go into hospitals. Okay?”

Mike grits his teeth. He may still feel like an idiot twenty-something, clueless and directionless, but he  _ is _ technically twice Hopper’s age. He doesn’t need to be patronized. “Yeah. Okay. I got it.”

He re-emerges from his hand to see the chief of police turning back to look at his Blazer - where, through the god-awful light haze, Mike can barely make out the silhouette of somebody waiting in the passenger seat. Watching them.

Mike waves a thumb towards the car. “She here just in case you have to kill me?”

“Nobody’s gonna kill anybody.”

_ Nancy might, _ he thinks, and his stomach squeezes as he remembers  _ that  _ particular little snag.

“But there’s a limited number of times I can deflect and downplay before that stops working. You got that?”

“It won’t happen again,” Mike assures, and Hop nods.

“Good.” His weight shifts like he’s about to turn away, but then he stops. “Look, you’re a good kid, Mike -”

Mike flicks up a finger - not the middle one, though he’s tempted. “Not a kid.”

“Oh yeah? How old’d you say you were? Twenty?”

“Twenty four,” he mumbles, inching back towards the door in the hopes that he can duck out before they have this conversation again.

“Brain frozen in time at twenty four. Sounds pretty -”

“Fuck off, I’m eighty five. Can the old man go back to sleep now?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hop grumbles, but Mike knows him well enough by now to know that the gruffness is only a front. Before Mike can close the door, he says, “Hey. How’ve you been doing? Good?”

Mike pauses with his hand on the knob. “What is this, a welfare check?”

“Just haven’t seen you around town much.”

“Yeah, well, some people work the night shift.” He glares. “And  _ sleep _ during the day.”

Hop gives in with a shake of his head. “Yeah, all right. Go back to sleep. And next time you get peckish, don’t go poking around for hospital blood supply. People need that stuff.”

“Yup.”

The door closes, finally, blocking out the glare of light. Mike leans against it for a moment and rubs his eyes, waiting until he hears the Chevy Blazer start up and crunch away down the street. Then he pads to the couch and peeks over the back, where the real perpetrator of the hospital incident sleeps on. He’s buried in blankets, so Mike can only see his closed eyes, messy hair, and one socked foot poking out at the other end of the cocoon.

Mike thought maybe the conversation would wake Will up, but he’s been sleeping like a stone for the past several days. He’s gone into a sort of hibernation mode, body temperature dropping and pulse slowing to a sub-human rate as his body rests and conserves energy for healing and processing. He keeps iceberg-ing his way into Mike’s space in his sleep, slowly but surely crowding him into the back of the couch, unconsciously seeking Mike’s relative heat. It’s a startling change. After sixty years of everyone else finding him a little cold to the touch, Mike is oddly proud to be a source of warmth. The downside is, Will is an icicle right now. Being cocooned in blankets and pressed up to Mike helps, but his body is hard at work using all his energy on things other than temperature regulation. Mike once woke to find Will unconsciously pushing two very cold hands up under Mike’s shirt. Good thing, too, because otherwise Mike would have slept right through his shift.

Mike has dragged himself out of bed twice in the past several days to go to his night shift at Blockbuster. He left a note for Will each time, but Will slept right through it, and each time Mike returned home to crawl almost immediately back onto the couch. He’s been having a sort of mini-hibernation himself. Immortals often settle into a sleep schedule pretty similar to humans, just in reverse, but it’s not uncommon to sleep for longer periods. Especially after an injury or a stressful period of time. Unless you have a job schedule to stick to, it’s pretty typical for older immortals to sleep for twenty four to seventy two hours at a time. Well, older immortals like  _ older than Mike. _ Nancy, in all her two-and-a-half-centuries glory, naps for months at a time sometimes. She’ll sleep through uneventful seasons, waking up when something interesting happens or when she gets a crick in her shoulder. And the  _ really _ ancient immortals are known to hunker down and hibernate for years or even decades. Hence the coffin thing. There are much worse places to take a thirty-year nap, as long as you have a friend to come and dig you out again after a while.

Will’s body is probably working on recovery right now. He had a helluva death, and the day following wasn’t easy either. He’ll probably be ravenous when he wakes up, with all the energy he’s burning through to recover. Good thing they’re well-supplied.

Mike already went out hunting about two days ago, bringing back a deer to hang in the garage and drain. He spent a night stocking the freezer with red popsicles and storing jugs of the stuff in the fridge, hoping it’ll still be good when Will finally does wake up. It’ll keep for about a week before it starts tasting nasty, and while it will never be as good as the fresh stuff, it’s something. 

He almost brought one of the blood-pops to work yesterday, as a joke, but eventually decided against it. That would be a little  _ too  _ obvious.

Steve and Robin are his graveyard shift coworkers at Blockbuster, and they totally have a theory that Mike is a vampire. They don’t actually believe it... he thinks... but it’s an ongoing joke. The pale skin, the night shift, Mike’s clear dislike of bright sunlight and his tendency to sunburn easily. They’ve never seen him eat anything with garlic, either, which doesn’t help. Not to mention his eerily accurate and extensive collection of absolutely useless 20th-century history facts. What was Kennedy doing in ‘58? Couldn’t tell ya. But that’s the year  _ The Hidden Fortress _ came out!

About a month ago, Mike showed up to work on Halloween wearing a cape, tophat, and plastic teeth, struggling so badly to speak through them that Robin laughed hard enough to cry real tears. 

Mike goes to use the restroom, feeds his fish, then comes back and clambers gingerly back into the precariously narrow space beside Will. He still feels a little awkward about it, like he’s being too presumptuous, and he reminds himself that Will  _ did _ ask him to stay. When they got home from the hospital and Will was just about dead on his feet, he caught Mike’s wrist before Mike could climb the stairs.

_ “Wait.” _

_ “I was gonna make up the bed for you. I didn’t think you’d want my dirty sheets.” _

_ “Huh?”  _ Will had squinted up at him sleepily, without releasing his grip on Mike’s arm.  _ “No. ‘M not kicking you out of your own bed, that’s stupid.” _

_ “I don’t care, I can take the couch.” _

_ “Well, just -” _ Will had tugged at him, already starting to list sideways on the cushions.  _ “Just stay, then.” _

By the time Mike had extracted himself and gathered blankets and pillows, Will had already fallen asleep. Or, so he thought. Once Mike had draped a few blankets over him, he tried to sneak off, only to be caught by an inhumanly quick hand.

_ “Don’t,”  _ Will had mumbled. His eyes had the vague look of being half asleep, or maybe fully sleep-talking, but his grip was tight.  _ “Stay.” _

So Mike stayed. He tried keeping to his side of the couch, at first, but... it’s a couch. There aren’t really “sides.” And he was so sluggishly tired, after being up for so long, that he barely had time to feel weird about it before he was out.

Now, history repeats itself. Mike digs under the blankets, fits himself into place, and pulls a quilt over his head to block out the rest of the light. He starts to drift almost immediately, but is awake enough to register Will pressing against him, soaking up Mike’s meager body heat with a little sigh.

Mike huffs out an almost-snort through his nose. Nancy better not have anything to do with that poorly-disguised welfare check. Then again, maybe it’s better if she did. If she’s sending Hopper to check in on him, that means she’s unlikely to show up unexpectedly herself. She’s been doing that kind of a lot lately.

He wasn’t lying when he told Will that his sister has been on his back lately. Always badgering him to do something with his time. Telling him to get up, get out of the house, find something to  _ do. _ Meddlesome old lady. He’s done plenty, thank you very much. He fought a war, didn’t he? He learned to fly, and that was well and good until most of his friends were shot out of the sky. And who was left? Who got up again a few days later, once his leg and back healed and he surfaced from hibernation to an empty field in an unfamiliar countryside? He did. Him, and no one else. And he hasn’t been especially ambitious since then. 

A few decades later, another war reared its ugly head. Vietnam, this time, and Mike stayed home. He’d had enough of war. He saw the sexual revolution gain traction and Pride parades gain popularity. And now all at once it’s the early ‘90s, and lately he’s been realizing that he hasn’t had a solid purpose in almost half a century. He joined the second World War because he wanted to  _ do  _ something, he wanted his gift-slash-curse to be useful, he wanted to help. And then he saw just how little he could do to stop the death of others, he saw the grime and paranoia and filth of war, the mangled limbs and smoking metal, and once the war was won he disappeared. Moved states, took up a different name, let the USAF assume he was dead. And since then, he’s been drifting. 

He didn’t realize it for a while. He told himself he was just taking a break, taking things easy. Simple jobs, quiet towns. Away from the ear-splitting bang of guns and the scream of engines and the choked crackle of voices on the radio going silent one by one. He just needed a break. He was taking a break. But then suddenly it was the ‘70s already, and his break still hadn’t ended, and then hairspray and leg warmers and MTV filled the magazines as the ‘80s bloomed into existence, and now he’s realizing that it’s the early ‘90s and he’s still town-hopping, moving whenever people start to notice his unageing features, wandering from one nothing-job to another. Graveyard shifts. Night after night after night spent in the immutable gritty glow of rural American neon,  _ OPEN 24 HRS, O P E N, RITA’S DINER, NO VACANCY, TEXACO, C A F E, YES WE’RE OPEN! _ Middle-of-nowhere gas stations with sickly fluorescent lights and racks of magazines, windswept dry-grass fields, Montana hills scattered with cows and rusted cars and Florida forests with their bearded trees and oily sea-drenched air.

He had a dog, a few decades ago, but she grew old and stiff and gray around the muzzle and didn’t show up for breakfast one night, and Mike found her a night later under the porch. He hasn’t had a real pet since then, except fish. He still talks to Lucas on the phone every week or so, and they meet up whenever they remember to arrange it, but Lucas is a bit of a ranger. Never in the same place for long, like Mike, but - unlike Mike - always up to some new mission. And Nancy pops in sometimes. But Mike hasn’t lived with roommates for a decade or so, and he hadn’t realized until now - until he met Will - just how soul-numbingly lonely he’s been.

When Mike first found Will, for a moment he thought maybe he was having a flashback. That he was imagining the whole thing, unaddressed memories bubbling up unexpectedly decades later. The smell of congealed blood and bile, the crackling crunch of ribs with every one of the boy’s wet, infrequent inhales. But Will wasn’t wearing a uniform, and when Mike ran and skidded to his knees next to him he didn’t disappear back into memory. He wasn’t a hallucination, he wasn’t another nightmare, he was a person. And he was very, very close to death. And as Mike gathered the boy’s head up into his lap, moving him as tenderly as he could with cold-numbed and adrenaline-shaking fingers, all he could think was  _ no, no, no, no, no, not again. Not this again. Please.  _ He couldn’t do this again. He couldn’t bear it. 

He shook the boy awake, pulled his consciousness closer to the surface again, asked his name. He peeked under his shirt to see if maybe he could fix it, he knows some first aid, maybe he could... But one look and Mike knew. Not even the amazing new hospitals with their miracle machines and magic medicines could have fixed how broken Will was.

_ “I don’t want to die - I’m not done -” _

Mike could feel his heart shattering all over again. But -

_ No. Not again. Not this time. _

So he broke his promise.

Mike can feel his arms tensing, and wills them to relax. They’re in no danger here. Hop is heading off investigations into the hospital incident, Nancy is off sleeping somewhere, and El doesn’t even know Will exists yet. He doesn’t have to go back to work for a couple days. They’re safe and cozy in his house with all the doors locked. All is well.

* * *

Will wakes sometime during the day.

He can tell because the curtains and blinds are both closed, but light bleeds through the cracks, just bright enough to reveal the features of Mike’s living room. It’s a honey-gold evening light, probably just before sunset.

Will breathes deep, exhales, and pushes his arms and legs out in a stretch. He feels sluggish, almost hungover, like he slept for days. Something is in the way of his stretch, blocking his range of motion. Confused, he pats at the heavy mass of warmth. It moves, twitching a little at the touch, and Will relaxes again. 

_ Ah. _

Will is sandwiched snugly between the back of the couch and the front of a Mike. Their legs are slotted together, or they were before Will stretched, and now Mike shifts and grumbles, protesting the movement. Will’s arms are folded up between them, and Mike’s are wrapped around Will. The smell of blankets and dormant bodies fills the bubble of warmth, musky and stale but not quite unpleasant.

He noses against Mike’s shoulder, burying the cold tip of his nose in the collar of Mike’s shirt. He’s still pretty muddy, at least half asleep and perfectly content to stay that way, but something in the back of his mind wonders if he should be allowing this. Should he carefully extract himself, or just lie still and pretend he’s fully asleep until Mike gets up? 

But it’s so warm, and soft, and comfortable, that Will starts to drift off again, his train of thought unraveling right in the middle. It’s fine. Mike is his partner, they’re in this together now. What they did together that frigid night beside the road tied them together in a way that Will can almost physically feel. Like a thread, or a current, humming softly between them. 

Or maybe he’s just very close to sleep and half-dreaming, imagining things. But whatever the case, Mike feels like something familiar. It’s a bone-deep recognition, like walking into your childhood home. It’s like they’ve been doing this for years, for decades, and as Will sinks into the muddled edges of sleep again, he struggles to remember for a moment -  _ have _ they? Has Mike been his partner for a long, long time? Or did they just meet? 

Then he remembers, lapsing away from sleep as the memory reappears. Ice, car, ditch, teeth. But as Mike twitches and sighs in his sleep, nuzzling closer, arms tightening around Will, the memory eases again and it’s  _ so  _ much easier to just lie here. To just close his eyes and soak in the warmth and scent of his bedmate, tangled in a heavy heap of limbs and blankets. He’ll get up in a few minutes, or maybe wait for Mike to wake up, but for now it’s so, so easy to just...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise.  
> This isn't the fic I'm supposed to be working on, but it's the only one my brain would think about, so (throws confetti) happy holidays, have some vampires.  
> As always, I love hearing any and all of your thoughts! Please do let me know what you think :)


	6. Roommates

When he wakes up again, it’s night. At least, he thinks it is. No lights are on, no sunlight pierces through the curtains, but Will can see just fine. Like night scenes in movies, where even in the dead of night the world is blue-tinted and clearly visible. It’s disorienting.

Will lifts his head a little, struggling to see over Mike’s shoulder.

It’s 11:06pm, if the clock in the hallway is to be believed.

Mike stirs, lifting his face, and Will is hit with a sleepy moment of bashful panic. Frozen in uncertainty, gaze darting away from the pillow line on Mike’s cheek, he’s caught somewhere in the middle of thinking, _Did I wake him up?_ and _Shit, were we_ cuddling _? Was that my fault? Did I do that? Well, that’s embarrassing. At least I don’t have a boner. Wait, do I? Okay, no. Phew,_ and, _Jesus, what day is it?_ and, _Holy hell I’m stiff._

And through that split-second muddle, what ends up coming out of his mouth is a vague sound between _hi_ and _sorry -_ a kind of “Horry.” 

Thankfully, Mike doesn’t even seem to notice. He makes some sort of noise in response, his voice croaking with leftover sleep, then gives a self-conscious chuckle as he notices their proximity. 

“Oh, uh,” he says, waffling as he tries to extract himself without kneeing Will in the groin or elbowing him in the teeth. 

They succeed in untangling enough for Mike to sit up, except now he’s caught in a web of twisted blankets. He fights them off clumsily while Will gathers all the nonchalance he can to say, “Morning. Night. Whatever it is.”

“Night.” Mike yawns. “Hungry?”

He laughs at how avid Will’s answering nod is. Will can feel his teeth start to press at his bottom lip at the thought of food. 

“I’ll get something. Be right back.” 

Mike stumbles upright, stretches with a groan that can’t possibly be PG-rated, and stumps off to the kitchen. Will drags himself out of the blankets and escapes to the bathroom, wondering how on earth he went at least twelve hours without getting up to pee once.

Mike is still bumping around in the kitchen by the time Will emerges. The dusty light over the sink is the only light on in the entire duplex, casting the little kitchen in a honey-glow that contrasts starkly with the blue of night. 

Needing to stretch, and craving a breath of fresh, cold air, Will slides open the back door. 

Behind the house is a small, scraggly backyard, fenced in and backed by a thick swath of trees. It looks like a past owner had some raised garden beds going, at one point, but they’re empty now. Frost hisses under his feet as he steps out onto the patio - if it can be called that. It’s little more than a few squares of cracked and buckled concrete, opaque with a rime of frost. The patio table is army-green plastic and similarly iced over. He rubs one foot over the toes of the other. Where are his socks? Probably lost somewhere in the couch. He crosses his arms over his chest, shivering, but grateful for the biting sweet freshness of a winter night.

It takes Will a few moments of gazing around to realize what’s so strange. The realization hits him with a little jolt: he can see everything perfectly. _Everything._ Without the porch light on, he should be straining to see into the quiet darkness of the backyard, but he can make out every detail. Every bump and striation in the ice feathering across the plastic picnic table. Every leaf in the trees behind the fence. It’s like being in broad daylight - but this is _so_ much better than the daylight. The sun blinded him, made his eyes sting and his head pound. All of that is gone now.

Maybe it’s the moonlight? Will has heard that the moon can light up the night like the sun, in places with minimal light pollution, but he’s never seen...

His train of thought goes dead as he stares skywards. “Holy fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Will startles, turning to see that Mike has stepped out onto the patio with him. Mike is wrapped in a blanket, the hair on one side of his head sticking straight up. He casts a fond and somehow wistful look at the sky, then directs it towards Will.

“Pretty neat, huh? You know, I almost got used to it. Kinda forgot that it didn’t always look that way.”

Will snorts and looks up again. “Pretty neat.”

The sky is a glittering tapestry of jewels. White and blue, yes, but there are points of red, too, and yellow, and, here and there, something close to purple. Clustered and strung in lacy patterns. Mike touches his elbow and directs his attention behind the house, and the breath leaves Will’s lungs when he sees the Milky Way. A solid path of stars, like a bridge from earth to space. Where did the sky go? Where’s that dull black nothingness dotted with a few weak twinklings of celestial light? This isn’t the sky, this is a high-quality NASA photograph projected over the house.

It may be the most awe-inspiring thing Will has ever personally witnessed.

When he finally manages to speak again his voice is rough. “Is it always like this?”

“Nah.” Mike steps up next to him, offering half of the blanket. “Sometimes it’s cloudy.”

Will doesn’t even bother casting him an _oh, hardy har_ look.

“You want breakfast? Or -” Mike flicks a wrist, glancing habitually to a watch that isn’t there. “Brunch?”

Will’s stomach gurgles. Good thing, too, because the promise of food may well be the only force on Earth that could tear him away from that sky.

* * *

It seems Mike wasn’t idle during Will’s long nap. There’s a jug of dark red liquid sitting on the counter, casual as a jug of orange juice. Some of the stuff is beginning to steam in a saucepan. The scent draws Will across the room, and he peers at it somewhat doubtfully as Mike checks the temperature with a meat thermometer. 

“Ninety two,” he reports. “Almost there.”

Will leans back against the little kitchen table, trying not to look as eager or hesitant as he feels. “And who do we have the pleasure of dining with tonight?”

Mike huffs out a laugh and shakes his head. “Nobody. It’s just a deer.”

“Oh.”

Some of the hesitance dissolves. The rest disappears in a flash as Mike says, “Ninety four point five... Eh, close enough,” and shuts off the stove, expertly sloshing the liquid into two mugs.

Will bounces on his toes through the whole process, abuzz with energy, and all but snatches the mug that Mike holds out to him. It’s empty within seconds, and he sheepishly accepts the second serving that Mike pours him. It’s not fresh, and he can tell - the texture isn’t quite right and the taste has gone a little stale, like wine that’s been open one day too long. But it’s hot and rich and metallic, and Mike starts preemptively refilling the saucepan from the jug as Will works his way through cup number three.

“You know,” Mike says, taking a sip of his own. He’s barely started on his own first serving. “You’re the most polite turn I’ve ever met. Most people would have just grabbed the pitcher as soon as they saw it.”

_Turn?_ Will thinks, but by the time he swallows and takes a breath there’s a more pressing question on his mind. “How long were we asleep?”

Mike swirls his mug. “‘Bout three and a half days.”

Will chokes.

“Well, you were. I was up a few times for work. And for this.” He lifts the cup in a salute, then takes a long sip as Will coughs and recovers.

“Three _days_?”

“You were hurt pretty bad. When you died, I mean. You needed the time to finish healing. I’m kinda surprised you weren’t asleep for longer, to be honest. Want toast?”

Mike is making himself busy, shuffling around the kitchen in pursuit of bread and spreadings. Will has a feeling it’s to divert attention from that one word, the one that keeps ringing in Will’s head. _Died._ He’s still having trouble wrapping his head around the idea. Died, but not dead. Not gone. Dead and back again, different than before. Died, but alive.

And... better. Now that he’s on his feet, and no longer ravenously hungry - though he keeps working his way through progressive cups of the hot liquid he’d rather not name - he’s becoming aware of how much he _doesn’t_ hurt. He hadn’t realized it yesterday - or, rather, earlier this week. The day of the hospital. He hadn’t realized how much his whole body hurt until it stopped. Now, he pries his fingers from the handle of his mug and stretches, filled with a sudden wonder at how... _normal_ he feels. Like breathing freely through both nostrils after days of a nasty head cold, he never realized how grateful he could be just to feel _okay._

They have toast and coffee at the kitchen table. Mike was right about regular food; it tastes just the same as always, but the only thing that seems to actually fill him up is the blood.

“Shit.”

Mike looks up, coming out of his own deep thoughts, and twists to see whatever Will is staring at. He looks back with a quirked eyebrow, clearly not understanding how his yellow kitchen wall phone could have prompted the sudden expletive. “What?”

Will puts down his toast to rub his eyes. “I gotta call my mom.”

* * *

The plan is simple. Watch the apartment from across the parking lot like total creeps until everyone leaves. Walk in casually. Collect as much of his stuff as he can and pack it into the car. Leave the rent money and a short note of explanation on the kitchen table. Walk out, and drive away.

Will should have known that nothing would ever be that simple.

They realized pretty quickly that Will was gonna have to tie up loose ends with his apartment. After all, he can’t go back and live with his erstwhile roommates, at least not for the foreseeable future. But he can’t just abandon them, either. He’d be totally screwing them over. They can’t afford rent without a third person, and there’s not enough time for them to find someone else before the next payment. And that’s not even to mention the strange circumstances of Will’s sudden departure. At the very least he has to leave a note before they file a missing person’s report.

When Will brought it up to Mike, that first day - well, night - after he woke up from his short hibernation, Mike shrugged it off like it was nothing.

_“We can just pay the rest of your portion of rent for the lease.”_

Will had gaped at him. _“I don’t even have rent for_ this _month! Shit, that reminds me, I have to call my boss and let her know I quit. I’ve missed like a week of work. They’ve probably fired me already. God, that’s never coming off my employment record, is it?”_

_“Hey, don’t worry about it. I can cover it.”_ Mike had tossed Will one of those kind, earnest smiles - the kind that makes Will want to smile back, no matter how anxious he is. _“I have savings that have been accruing interest for like fifty years, I’ll pay for it. And don’t worry about the job thing. There are loopholes. You’ll see. I job-hop all the time.”_

So, here they are, carrying out Will’s clandestine evacuation of the apartment that he briefly called home.

And here Dustin is, talking a mile a minute as he heaves grocery bags up onto the counter, his trademark baseball cap pulled down snugly over his curls.

“Holy fuck dude, _there_ you are, oh my god I gotta call your mom, she’s been going _apeshit,_ calling three times a day to see if you’re here, I honestly thought you were _dead,_ where the hell have you -?” 

_“Don’t,”_ Will blurts, and physically sandwiches himself between Dustin and the phone. “Absolutely do not call my mother.” 

Dustin’s forehead crinkles. “Huh? _Why?_ You know she thinks you were kidnapped, right?”

Will’s hands rise to rub his eyes as he takes several strategic steps back. He still feels jetlagged, and going on this venture in the middle of the day when he _just_ got his sleeping schedule flipped around isn’t helping. But it was the only time the apartment was _supposed_ to be empty. “Believe me, I know.”

The call with his mother did not go well.

In summary: his family is under the impression that he’s been recruited into some sort of gang, cult, or mob. On the upside, Jonathan seems to have dismissed Will’s teeth as a figment of his imagination. On the downside, he thinks that Mike drugged him with something in the hospital and used Will’s subsequent loss of control to drag him away into a life of crime.

Will can’t even blame them. Not really. One week ago, if somebody in his own life had picked up and disappeared without any real explanation, what would he have thought? Especially if they had gone seemingly feral in a public hospital and been bodily dragged away from their family by a complete stranger? If Jon or Dustin had called to say, _“I’m fine but I won’t be home for a while, it’s complicated, I can’t explain now”_? If they abandoned their whole life without warning? He can’t say he wouldn’t have some dark theories of his own.

But he’s an adult, and he hasn’t actually done anything illegal, and his family only has harebrained theories to present to the police. Hardly grounds for an official investigation. People pick up and leave sometimes. He’s not some twelve-year-old kid that vanished into thin air on his bike ride home. Besides, they can’t say they haven’t heard from him. Not now that he’s called to tell them he’s all right.

But now, here’s a problem. It’s easy to avoid the hardest truths on the phone, where the accusing, tearful voice is miles away and you can hang up whenever you need. But what is he supposed to say to Dustin, standing right in front of him? _Dustin,_ who knows more of Will’s secrets than his own brother. His best friend since fourth grade. Cheerful, capable, intuitive and analytical Dustin, who figured out that Will was gay long before Will ever told him. What is Will supposed to say to _him?_

The best friend in question is still staring at him, palms raised as if waiting to be handed an answer, seconds ticking by as Will flounders.

Why did Mike have to go and start loading the car? Surely he knows how to handle situations like this.

Then again, maybe it’s better that Mike isn’t here. Who knows what Will’s family told Dustin about him.

“Anything?” Dustin is mad, now, his normally affable face folding into something stormy. “Really? Nothing? You get in a fucking _car crash_ , disappear into thin air, we think you’re _dead_ , and then when you finally show up it’s... it’s...” He throws his hands up, indicating the entirety of the situation, and Will is about to interject when he barrels onward. “Your mom calls saying she thinks you’re in some sort of danger, and now you show up in the kitchen a week later like nothing happened? _And you won’t even tell me what’s going on?_ Not even me? Dude. I’m your best friend. I kind of thought you trusted me with shit like -”

Dustin’s rant cuts off abruptly as his gaze catches on the bulging envelope on the table. Will’s hand jerks for it, but it’s too late; Dustin is already snatching it up. Will sighs, turning away. He wasn’t supposed to see that until Will was already long gone. But Dustin tears it open, grim-faced, and brandishes the wad of bills like it’s just what he feared. 

“Where did you get this?” he demands flatly. 

“... listen -”

“It’s that guy, right? The one your mom talked about?”

Will’s brows sink. “What did they say about -?”

“Is he your, what, your sugar daddy or something?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Dustin, no!” Will is angry for about two seconds, and then that energy tips over into helpless laughter. It’s just too ridiculous. He can’t think about this whole conversation and _not_ laugh.

Dustin gives in after a moment and starts laughing too, face red. “Well,” he hiccups, trying to gather himself, “I mean, it was worth a guess.”

“Gross, dude. _No._ You know I’m not attractive enough for that, anyway.” Dustin makes a dismissive gesture, and Will pulls himself back to seriousness. “Look, I just... I can’t tell you everything. Not right now.”

He’s speaking with genuine remorse, and maybe Dustin can tell, because his face clears. Here’s the level-headed optimist of Will’s childhood. 

“Legal trouble?” he guesses. He sits at the table in a subtle invitation for Will to sit with him, but Will doesn’t dare get that close. “I have some friends in law school. Maybe we could figure something out.” He pauses a beat, hoping for Will to reply, then quirks a playful eyebrow. “What, you kill somebody?” 

It’s _so_ close to what almost happened, so much closer than Dustin could ever guess, that Will feels an idiotic sob push up his throat and has to disguise it as a bark of dry laughter. But Dustin hears it for what it is, his levity dries up in an instant. 

“Fuck, dude. Are you -?” 

He gets up and takes a step forward. Will takes a step back. 

“Okay.” Dustin hovers, clearly wanting to close the space and offer comfort but respecting Will’s retreat. “Okay. Hey, it’s cool. We all make mistakes. Almost killed some asshole in Molecular Biology the other day. Dude brought a whole plate of sticky pancakes to an eight a.m. class. Unbelievable. And I’ve, uh, watched a lot of true crime shows, so -” 

Will gives another bout of laughter, this one genuine, and Dustin eases half a step closer. His lips quirk up. “You know, I could probably help you out. You hide the body yet?” 

Will uses the last of his laughter to put himself back together, composing himself with a sniff and a shake of his head. “No bodies.” 

“Oh, good. Because, you know, I would have totally done it for you, but it sounded like a pain in the ass. All that digging, you know? Volunteering at that tree planting thing last summer was bad enough. I’ve dug enough holes to last me a lifetime.” 

Will chuckles again - Dustin always could put him at ease, even when he was a painfully shy eight-year-old with the world’s most awkward haircut. He opens his mouth, trying to summon up the explanations he had prepared. The explanations that are written in that envelope, alongside his fair share of rent money for the remainder of the lease. _I switched colleges. I’ve been thinking about it for a while and an opportunity opened up really suddenly, so I decided to take it. I need a change of pace. I need a change of scenery. I need some space from my overprotective family. I’m a restless, impulsive twenty-something; is it really that hard to believe?_

Will leans against the back of the couch, which serves as a partition between the kitchenette and the tiny living room in this shitty apartment, and looks out the window when it’s too hard to look his best friend in the eyes. “You heard about the car crash?”

“Duh.”

He fidgets, knocks his shoes together. “What did you hear about it?”

He sees Dustin make some loose gesture in his peripheral vision. “You and your mom were on your way home to Hawkins and you hit some ice, skidded into a ditch and flipped the car. She got taken to the hospital in an ambulance, but they didn’t know to look for you until she woke up and started asking where you were.”

“Dead.” He spits it out before he can reconsider, then chances a look at Dustin. “I was dead.”

He’s about to add, _for a while,_ but Dustin is already moving, and Will barely has time to turn his head before he’s being poked in the face.

“What -? Cut it out. I’m not a ghost. I said I _was_ dead, not that I _am_.” 

He ducks away, trying to hold his breath. He’s been ignoring it, but it’s getting steadily harder to be in here. He ate just before coming in, but hunting instincts have been stirring since Dustin walked in the door. Keeping his distance has helped a little, but that strategy is starting to crumble.

“So, your heart stopped,” Dustin reasons. “And this... this guy your mom talked about, he brought you back. CPR. Right? And now you feel like you owe him your life, is that it? So you’re packing up to go... go... what, help him with something? Move in with him?”

Will looks up at him, startled. He’s covering his mouth with a hand, trying to act casual about it, because he can tell the tips of his teeth will become visible any second now. Dustin, logical to the last, has just offered Will an out without even realizing it. It’s the most logical explanation, the closest to the truth, and one that Will never even thought of. This could be as simple as just agreeing. He could even expand upon the lie, weave in some extra excuses. Mike saved his life, so now Will is setting off to help him in... some faraway research expedition. Something in Siberia, or Brazil. That’s why he has to take off so suddenly. That’s why he won’t be around for a bit. Mike isn’t some gang leader, he’s a PhD student in tireless pursuit of an obscure thesis, and the _least_ Will could do is help him out after the whole life-saving thing.

Instead, Will sighs and drops his hand. 

Dustin keeps talking for a good thirty seconds before he notices anything. He’s going on about how Will can’t just drop everything and trust his life to this guy, what if he’s a serial killer? What if he’s a rapist? And even if not, what about school? Will can’t just throw his own degree in the trash for someone else, no matter if they saved his life or not. Surely there’s some other way that Will can pay him back, if he feels that strongly about...

And that’s about the point that Dustin trails off. Will swears he can feel his gaze like a hot beam of light on his face.

“Uh. Will?”

Will tries to speak, gets stuck on a clogged throat, clears it, and tries again. “Yeah?”

“What’s, uh...” Dustin points to his own canines, one after the other. “What’s going on there?”

“I shouldn’t stay for too much longer,” Will sidesteps. “I don’t wanna...” It sounds maudlin to his own ears, like a badly written TV show - this is not the kind of thing you actually say in real life - but he forces it out. “... hurt you.”

He can almost see the puzzle pieces coming together behind Dustin’s eyes. They narrow as he does the math, then widen all at once. “No fucking way.”

That’s about when they both hear the rattle of the doorknob.

Mike’s hair is disheveled and he’s sans jacket. He strides right past Dustin, already on a roll and out of breath. “Okay, I got all the small furniture in the back. Don’t ask me how we’re gonna get it back out. Fuckin’ Tetris back there. Also your nightstand almost gave me a concussion. Thanks for all the help, by the way. What have you been doing in here, watching TV? What’s next, are we bringing your bed, too, or -?”

It takes him about half a second to notice Dustin, notice Will with his teeth clearly visible, and leap between the two of them.

“No, no,” Will says. He’s getting a little better at speaking around his teeth, but his words still come out with a slight lisp. “It’s okay, we were just... talking.”

Dustin points at Mike. “Is he one too?” 

Mike whips around to scowl at Will. “Really?” 

“Well I wasn’t exactly expecting him to be home, okay? I had to tell him something.” Will grimaces at a spike of hunger, then lowers his voice to mutter, “I don’t suppose you brought the...?” 

“Oh, yeah, sure.” Mike hands over a thermos, and Will tilts back about half its contents in one gulp. Then he caps it and waves an arm between his two companions. “Mike, this is my best friend since fourth grade. Dustin Henderson.” To Dustin’s credit, he only hesitates a split second before stepping forward to offer a handshake. “Dustin, this is my - Mike.”

He’s not sure what to call Mike. Mike has called Will his _turn_ before, but Will has never heard what the reverse is. Turner? That sounds dumb.

“Nice to meet you, Will’s Mike,” Dustin grins, cheeky, and Will shoots him a glare. Dustin doesn’t notice, too busy failing at being surreptitious about checking Mike’s mouth for sharp teeth. He looks like he’s about to shoot through the roof.

“Please don’t freak out,” Will offers weakly. “It’s really not as -”

“Are you kidding?” Dustin rounds on him, beaming like he just won the lottery. “I’m a _bio major_. I’ve been looking for aliens and Bigfoot and shit since I was five. This is the best day of my life.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And they were roommates.  
> The Party is slowly coming together!  
> As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts!


	7. Love Bites

It starts when Mike gets into one of his rants.

In the past few weeks, Will has learned a lot about his new roommate - good and bad.

Mike is patient, passionate, generous, creative, strategic, a pacifist, a rebel, and fiercely protective of the people he cares about.

He can also be stubborn, loud, moody, cavalier, a little bit of a control freak, and apathetic. Prone to periods of brooding followed by demonstrative outbursts. 

Mike seems to exist always on one side of a pendulum or the other, rarely in the middle. When something interests him, his passion visibly bubbles over, making itself known with flushed cheeks and animated gestures. It’s easy to get swept up in whatever Mike is excited about. When something _doesn’t_ interest him, you’d have an easier time making a snowman in hell than convincing Mike to spend any amount of time or energy on it.

He’s deeply caring and attentive to the needs of others, willing to go out of his way to help somebody who needs it - but he’d rather shove down his own pain and sulk rather than clearly communicate troubles of his own.

He’s well-read and has a lot to say about a wide variety of subjects - so much to say, in fact, that he can very easily dominate a conversation for hours without meaning to or realizing it.

Will, who grew up shy and soft-spoken, had to teach himself how to interrupt and talk right over Mike’s sentence if he wanted to get a word in edgewise. It felt rude, at first, but he’s getting used to it. That’s just how you have to talk to Mike, unless you want an impromptu lecture delivered to you with a somewhat unwarranted degree of confidence. Will often jokes that Mike should get a Ph.D. so he can become a professor and ramble for a living.

“You could teach night classes,” Will once said, blinking innocently, and Mike threw a paperback at him.

To his credit, Mike seems to be catching himself more often now. He’ll realize what he’s doing, flush, grin sheepishly and try to wrap up his point. Of course, wrapping up usually takes another half hour, but it’s a start.

It was during one of these conversations, on a walk around town, that the topic first came up.

Will doesn’t even remember how it started. He just remembers that they were in the patchy stretch of trees and bushes, not quite part of the town but not quite _not_ part of it, in the space between stores and houses. During the day, people walk their dogs and ride bikes here. There’s a drab little playground next to an oblong field of dry winter grass. Sometimes there’s a dusty sidewalk, and sometimes the concrete squares disappear and a dirt path takes over, worn into the ground by kids walking to school, teens walking to the convenience store and adults just walking to walk. 

At night, this little stretch of town is deserted. They have the whole place to themselves. They stop by the playground more often than not, sitting on the swings side-by-side to look up at the startling array of stars.

That particular night, they were walking back home from Blockbuster. Will came to meet Mike after his shift and pick up some movies, and they made their habitual stop at the playground on the way back despite the soft powder of falling snow.

Somehow they moved from the topic of movies to Hollywood to government to society, and then Mike threw out an allusion or two, and all at once Will found himself wondering if Mike was saying what Will _thought_ he was saying. He decided to cautiously test the waters, keeping his stance firmly neutral and theoretical until he could be sure. And then they reached the playground, rocking back and forth on the swings without really swinging, and Will’s heart was thumping just a little harder than usual in his chest.

It’s always a gamble, having a conversation like this. Will your conversation partner suddenly wrinkle their nose and say, _“Gross, right? Too bad AIDS didn’t get rid of all of them. The last thing this world needs right now is a bunch of gays”_? Roll the dice and find out!

But that didn’t happen. It wasn’t long before they found themselves on the same side of the debate, shrouds of ambivalence falling away layer by layer as they each realized, _ah, you’re on my side here._

And for a while, that was it.

They moved back into more familiar, shallower waters, and they walked home in the snow. And for over a week, not a word more was said about it.

Will doesn’t count himself as an exceptionally patient person, but _this_ kind of patience he excels at. This kind of patience was borne out of necessity. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it _caution._ Self preservation. He knows firsthand how people - close friends, family even - can be totally supportive of everyone’s right to love who they love... as long as it’s in theory. As long as they think they’re having a purely academic or perhaps political discussion - something as abstract and far away as world hunger, or the bubble economy in Japan, or dwindling populations of endangered species in Madagascar. But a funny thing happens when people realize that the theoretical queer is standing right in front of them. The second they find out that the subject of their light, mildly entertaining dinner conversation was in fact present in their own lives...

It’s amazing how quickly people can turn on a dime. Sometimes, people who otherwise seem perfectly reasonable suddenly bend over backwards to negate every word of support that just came out of their mouths. _Well, of_ course _I think people should be able to choose whatever lifestyle they want, but I didn’t think we were talking about someone I_ know _!_

In Will’s experience, queerness is far more often tolerated as a thought-provoking classroom discussion than as real people’s everyday reality.

So for nights on end, he shut his mouth and turned over that conversation in his head until it was marble-smooth. For a week, every time he passed Mike in the living room he wanted to say, _Are you like me? Or just an ally? Or would you take a step away from me if I told you? Were you trying to tell me something back there, on those swings, or am I just hearing what I want to hear?_

This cyclical, self-inflicted torment ended when Will finally got his answer, about a week and a half after that first conversation. 

He took a tiny leap of faith, dropping an ex’s pronoun in the middle of a sentence, ready to quickly and casually correct if things went downhill. _Huh? Oh, I meant she._ But he watched as, in his peripheral vision, Mike’s shoulders seemed to drop three inches. 

Not two breaths later, Mike somewhat awkwardly shoehorned in a reference to a guy he hooked up with a few times. It was a quiet and fumbling admission, and Mike looked at his hands instead of Will the whole time, needlessly rearranging small objects on the table. But Will let out a breath of his own, pretending not to notice as Mike hurriedly steered them on to other topics. Externally he was calm and nonchalant, doing his best to act like nothing huge just happened. Internally he was jumping around and setting off party poppers. But Mike seemed drained enough by the whole conversation, and the last thing Will wanted to do was scare him away with too much exuberance. 

Neither of them acknowledged it directly. Neither of them ever said the word _gay_ or _queer_ \- not in reference to themselves, or each other. But some little bit of tension unraveled, after that. Like there had been a thin sheet of plastic between them, invisible and permeable but _there,_ and now it was starting to crumble _._ A degree of distance and separation Will hadn’t even felt until it was gone.

Will was so caught up in his own unspoken relief that it didn’t occur to him to wonder, until hours later, if that may have been the first time Mike has ever come out to anyone. He was nervous enough. Tense as a wire, hands restless, clearly sweating under his shirt despite how hard he was trying to sound casual. Will knows the feeling. But Will grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s. It wasn’t _great,_ he’s the first to say that, but this is the modern era. He grew up seeing people like him on TV, hearing about them in the news. Sure, the news in question wasn’t often positive, but he knew they existed. He knew he wasn’t completely alone in the world. 

But Mike? Mike, whose voice shook while admitting an encounter with another man, even decades later? Mike, who grew up when people like him were packed away into asylums for being “mentally ill”? Will doesn’t want to imagine what that was like, but he does anyway, late in the day when he should be sleeping. 

It’s a lot more comfortable living with Mike, now that Will doesn’t have a small but constant fear that he’ll let something slip and expose himself. Now that he knows for sure he’s not living in enemy territory. 

On the other hand, it makes... certain issues... worse. Issues that Will has been doing his absolute best to shove down, ignore, deny into nonexistence.

The night he’s forced to confront them is the night one week before Christmas, when Mike strolls into the bedroom and, offhand as anything, says, “You know, you should probably get some practice biting me.”

Will pauses halfway through pulling on a sock, perched on the end of the bed with one ankle propped up on the opposite knee. “What?”

Mike shrugs. He just got back from brushing his teeth, and the smell of spearmint hangs around him as he plops down next to Will. 

They’ve been sharing the bedroom for about two weeks now. At first Mike was ostensibly sleeping on the couch, because he insisted that Will take the bed. But their first day home turned out to be habit-forming, and far more often than not they both ended up on the couch. Which was giving them both sore backs and cricks in their necks. So eventually they threw in the towel and just started using the bed. Anyway, what else are they supposed to do? There’s only one bed in this itty bitty duplex, and it would be silly for one of them to sleep on the couch forever.

There’s another, smaller bedroom down the hall which Mike mainly uses for storage and as a sort of office, but neither of them ever mentions that they could clear it out and buy Will his own bed.

Mike fishes a ratty old sweatshirt off the floor and switches it out for the tee shirt he had been wearing, momentarily muffling his voice. “You’ll have to practice on _something._ You can’t drink stale blood out of thermoses forever. I’ll heal fast, _and_ I’m not human, so you won’t go nuts and kill me. So, it makes sense.”

It takes Will a few seconds of flustered confusion before he remembers to finish putting on his socks.

Outside, somebody roars down the sidewalk on a skateboard, the rhythmic sound muted but audible through the closed windows and tightly drawn blackout curtains. Will still hasn’t quite gotten used to getting ready for bed in the bright hours of the morning, as if noon was midnight.

“C’mon,” Mike prods when Will can’t formulate an answer. “Just try. It’s just me, it’s not like I’m gonna judge you.”

“But I’ve never...” Will waffles, and Mike rolls his eyes.

“Uh, yeah, that’s the point. Anyway, yes you have.”

Will sputters. “That was _animals._ ”

“So this should be even easier, then. You don’t have to get fur in your mouth or anything.”

Will blinks at him helplessly. The worst part is, he wants to. He couldn’t help but imagine it, the moment Mike said it aloud, and the idea is endlessly appealing. His eyes flicker to Mike’s neck, then skip away guiltily as if he was caught checking out his ass.

He’s nervous. Instinctually loathe to expose that much of his soul to anybody. 

It’s not that he doesn’t trust Mike. He does. But that can’t possibly undo the decades of social conditioning screaming at him that it’s not okay to be vulnerable like that, _especially_ not with another man. Will doesn’t think he can do this, not without Mike having a front-row seat to Will’s every tiny tremor of desperation. He can’t school his face during something like this. His instincts are just too overpowering, too new. And it’s not like Mike has never seen him lose his grip on humanity and become the animal part of himself. He’s seen that plenty. He’s seen Will in states that Will would be mortified to be witnessed in by anyone else. But this is different. Surely Mike can see that this is different. This is _intimate._ Lips touching an exposed throat, teeth digging in, sucking at the skin. Instincts urging him on. How in the goddamn fuck is Will supposed to approach that platonically?

This is bullshit.

And now that they both know about each other... well, that’s complicated. It makes this easier, in many ways. And a lot harder, in others. Because now that Mike knows the kinds of things that Will wants, and Will knows about Mike, how can they possibly do something this intimate without starting to think...?

 _No,_ Will tells himself. _You cut that out. You can’t be thinking that. You can’t do that._

He sets his shoulders. Mike is right, he’ll have to figure out how to do this eventually. And better that it’s Mike, his friend, his unexpected partner in life for the foreseeable future, than some stranger. Better this happen now, here, in a safe and controlled environment. Will doesn’t think he could bear it if his first memory of biting someone was full of terror and danger and guilt and that terrible, soul-ripping hunger. 

“Um, yeah.” Will nods sideways. “Sure. Good idea.”

Without further comment, Mike turns sideways, tilts his head, and closes his eyes. Will proceeds to panic.

He can’t do this. How is he supposed to do this? Just lean down and dig his teeth into his friend’s jugular, no big deal? It would take less guts to lean over and kiss Mike full on the mouth.

Mike must sense how tense he is, because his eyes crack open and he gives a little chuckle. “Hey. Breathe. Relax.” He opens his eyes fully. “You know, you don’t have to do it if you don’t -” 

“No,” Will interrupts, trying and failing to sound steady. “It’s okay.” The words _I want to_ are at the back of his throat, but he can’t say them. They’re too true. “I just... I don’t really know how to...”

It’s a good enough excuse, and not exactly untrue.

Mike’s eyes widen. “Oh.” He palms his forehead, laughing at himself. “Right. Duh. Sorry. Okay, let’s start over. You’ll, uh, need your teeth first.”

“I’ll try.” 

Will can’t always control when his teeth extend. They always sharpen around blood, of course, or if he’s hungry, but neither of those are the case right now. He closes his eyes a little self-consciously and thinks back to the last time they went hunting together. It takes a few moments of concentrated effort, but he feels the sharp sting in his gums with a triumphant wince. He always forgets that it hurts. It’s easier to ignore when he’s hungry.

Meanwhile, Mike is saying, “Try to find a big vein. There’s usually one...” He takes Will’s hand and pulls his fingers up, skimming them along Mike’s own throat until Will feels a steady - and somewhat elevated - pulse. “Around here. It runs in this direction -” He drags their fingers back and forth. “- so try to align your teeth like that so both punctures hit the vein. Just one works, but not as well.” 

“Right.” Will’s voice is a little clogged and he clears his throat. “Okay.”

When he starts to lean in, stomach in knots, he gets about halfway there. Then he makes accidental eye contact with Mike and snorts, his body dispersing some anxiety through laughter. “Sorry,” he says, fighting another giggle.

“‘Sokay.”

“I can’t, I just - agh.” 

Will covers his face, which has gone hot and probably lobster-red, and Mike says, “Try not to think about it too much. It’s mostly instinctual, maybe if you think about -” 

“Mike, stop talking.” 

“Sorry.” 

“You’re making this way more awkward than it needs to be.” 

“Oh, _I_ am? You’re the one getting all -” 

“Okay, you know what?” 

“Just grow some fangs and bite me already. Damn.” 

“Shut up.” 

Defiance carries him most of the way, this time, right up until his lips touch the curve of Mike’s neck and his movement hitches with a shudder. Something shifts. He had to concentrate hard to extend his teeth at first, but now it’s like he’s teetering at the edge of a steep slope. He can tell that if he takes just one more step, one more inch forward, momentum will pick him up and carry him without his own effort or will. He could pull back and it might abate...

But that’s not why they’re here. 

And, moreover, he doesn’t want to.

Mike takes a long breath in and lets it out, like he’s centering himself, and Will swears he can feel goosebumps rise on Mike’s neck as his teeth graze the skin. Then he gives himself over to momentum and instinct takes over for him. His gums ache for a moment as his teeth extend fully, at the same moment that his mouth opens wide over the curve of skin and bites down. There’s a fraction of a second of resistance, there and gone in the blink of an eye before the needle-sharpness of his teeth puncture the flesh and slip down into the wet firmness of muscle and sinew.

He means to draw back, _There, I did it, can we go to sleep now?_ But he’s distracted by the taste. Mike’s blood doesn’t taste like regular blood. It’s very clearly not _food._ Will has no urgent drive to drink it; he can tell it wouldn’t satiate his hunger. But it doesn’t taste like how blood used to taste before all this, either. It doesn’t match up with Will’s blurred and splintered memories of gagging as he tried to drink from Mike’s wrist, _that_ night. 

Hot, slippery liquid drips down Will’s chin and starts running towards the collar of Mike’s sweatshirt as Will draws his teeth from the puncture wounds. He darts forward on reflex, dragging the pad of his tongue over the little stream before it can reach the fabric. Mike jolts like the sensation shocked him.

 _I wish I’d met you before you turned,_ Will finds himself thinking, head sluggish and hazy and hyper-attuned all at once. _I would have loved to drink from you._

He’s aware that he _should_ be embarrassed by that, he _should_ be scolding himself for thinking that, but he can’t summon the energy to care right now. It’s far easier to lick over the two small puncture wounds, making Mike go tense and trembling from head to foot, and try to puzzle out the taste of him.

It takes a little trial and error to find the best angle, but eventually Will figures out how to position himself. He locks his lips over Mike’s skin, forming a seal so the steadily running liquid doesn’t stream down into his collar. The whole time, Mike holds very still, his only movement being the accelerating rise and fall of his chest as he begins to pant. 

His control seems to snap when Will’s arms slip up around Mike’s body, one hand fisting in his hair to hold his head at the right angle, and Mike gives a shaky exhale and starts to squirm. For a split second Will thinks it’s an attempt to wriggle away, and instinct has him tightening his grip on his prey, thinking, _Nope. You’re not going anywhere._ And then Mike’s arms squeeze around Will in turn, and Will realizes all at once that Mike is pushing closer, not pulling away. Something in his chest gives a hard little ache and something like a purr rolls up his throat as he pulls back to nuzzle into Mike’s neck, searching out another point to ease his teeth into. The motion is surer this time, smoother, and Mike gives a startled little moan.

That seems to jolt him out of it, and Mike’s movement of surprise in turn shakes Will halfway out of his reverie. It’s just enough for him to grasp onto some self control, breaking away with a sharp gasp - apparently he forgot to breathe for a few seconds there.

He becomes aware of a problem about a half second later. And it’s a good thing that Mike is rummaging around vaguely for something to stop the flow with, or else he would _definitely_ notice the issue. 

Mike is just pressing a pillowcase to his neck when Will manages to arrange himself as best he can to disguise the unfortunately visible tent in his pajama pants.

“Great,” Mike croaks. “That, uh -”

He stumbles, and Will wipes a hand across his sticky chin and lips. “We should probably -”

He gestures vaguely towards the hallway, meaning to indicate the bathroom where they can clean up.

Thankfully, Mike seems to connect the dots of Will’s half-thought. “Right, yeah.”

The heat in Will’s face spreads through the rest of his head, to the tips of his ears and down his neck as Mike stands and tries to surreptitiously tug the hem of his sweater down to conceal an issue of his own.

There’s only one thing to do in a situation like this: feign complete ignorance and ignore the entire situation until it’s tomorrow and you can forget anything ever happened.

* * *

Will can’t forget what happened.

In fact, he can barely stop thinking about it.

It’s not the biting, although he thinks about that too. It’s Mike. It’s the fact that Will has been crushing on him, _hard,_ since the very beginning. He’s been trying to ignore it, or deny it, but there’s no more denying it after last night. Not after _that._

But that doesn’t change the fact that he _can’t_ crush on Mike. It’s just not in the cards. Anyway, it’s just puppy love. He’s just attaching himself to Mike because Mike brought him back from the literal dead. Who wouldn’t develop a little bit of puppy love after that? But it’s never gonna go anywhere. It can’t. It’s like hopelessly crushing on the popular jock, or the young counselor at summer camp. 

So he does his best to ignore it. Still. Again.

He and Mike have to be roommates. Family, almost. Their lives are tied together now, at least for a while. Will can’t go back to living with humans, he’d end up killing them. And he can’t make things awkward and uncomfortable with Mike, either. It would be awful. He’d ruin this whole thing; they’d both be trapped in a stiff, unwinnable situation on the daily, and it would be Will’s fault. 

So he rolls his eyes at himself when he catches himself admiring Mike in the warm light of the kitchen, making lunch at midnight, and he tries not to let himself overthink it when Mike drapes an arm around his shoulders while they watch movies on the couch, and he tries not to show how fluttery his stomach gets when Mike pulls him down on the couch to nap or belly-laughs at some of Will’s cleverer turns of phrase.

It would be easier if they weren’t getting so comfortable with each other.

They’ve been playing more, for one thing. After that first practice bite, Will developed a habit of coming up behind Mike and playfully nipping his neck. Mike is ticklish and Will takes disproportionate joy in torturing him. 

He threatens at first, almost-whispering from across the room. “Bite, bite, bite.” 

Mike stiffens, like a rabbit picking up on a fox’s scent, and points a sandwich knife at him. “No.” 

Will creeps closer. “Biiiite.” 

“Don’t you dare, William.” 

“Bite!” 

“Agh!” 

Will pounces, dodging around the butter knife to nip at Mike’s neck, making Mike go limp with helpless laughter, struggling halfheartedly. 

He pantomimes a stabbing motion with the butter knife like he’s reenacting _Psycho._ “Stab, stab, stab,” he laughs, and Will makes cartoon-gobbling sounds against Mike’s throat, making him yell with another bout of laughter. “Ew,” he heaves, “Stop it, you’re so weird. Stab, you’re dead.” 

“ _You’re_ weird.” 

“Stab, you’re dead!” 

Will snorts, finally disengaging - and realizing too late that in their playful skirmish he had backed Mike up into the corner of the counter, and that Mike’s face is now flushed. Will takes half a step back, trying not to make it _look_ like he’s putting space between them. 

“Like you’d kill me,” he tosses off. If he keeps the playful cadence in his tone maybe Mike won’t notice that he’s breathing a little harder than he should be. “After all the trouble of bringing me back.” 

Mike waves the knife before turning, a little out of breath himself, back to sandwich preparation. “Don’t tempt me.” 

On some level, Will knows that Mike could absolutely stop him if he really wanted to, and that he’s letting Will overpower him. Like a cat letting a kitten win a tussle so that the kitten can learn to hunt. This isn’t just play, it’s practice. 

And it’s shit like _that_ that makes it so hard to forget how much he wants to go in for a kiss when he backs Mike into a corner instead of retreating with a laugh.

* * *

Time passes strangely. With his schedule newly flipped on its head, and all the usual markers of time gone, Will can barely believe that the month is wearing away day by day.

Christmas is strange and a little subdued, since Will can’t spend it with his family. But Mike attempted to make blood pudding for them, which he was pretty terrible at, and Will found a recipe for blood sausage, which turned out better. It’s not as good as real, fresh blood, but it’s not quite “human food,” either. 

Will sent off packages and letters to his mom and brother with no return address. They’re still convinced that Mike is some cult leader that’s been tricking Will into abandoning his family and previous life, so phone calls have been awkward, few, and far between. Hop has been helpful in heading off police investigation, ready to point other cops in the wrong direction if anyone comes snooping around town. But so far, no one has. Thanks to Will’s false story about seeing a doctor in Mike’s home town, the day after the accident, the Byers know that Mike is living somewhere in Indiana. But there are a lot of towns in the four-hour-drive radius from the hospital, and nothing in particular to draw investigators to _this_ one. 

Eventually, Will is gonna have to explain everything, or at least convince his family that he’s not brainwashed or in a hostage situation. But they wouldn’t exactly believe him if he told them the truth - would they? Jonathan saw his teeth in the hospital. Just for a moment. But who knows what he thought of that. He hasn’t brought it up since. He probably brushed it off as a trick of the eyes. 

In any case, Will spends his first ever Christmas without his family, trying not to show how sad he is and grateful that Mike doesn’t push for cheer. Still, it’s not all bad. They have a tree, and put lights up on their half of the duplex roof, and drop in briefly to Steve and Robin’s holiday party. On the day itself they open presents in the morning, go hunting in the snowy forests in the afternoon, and get tipsy on Sangria in the evening. 

New Years is better. Dustin visits, as does one of Mike’s friends - an immortal named Lucas, sharp-witted and sharp-tongued but welcoming, and not much older than Mike himself - and, after discovering a shared interest in Dungeons and Dragons, they spend most of the night in an impromptu campaign. Dustin and Lucas get along like wildfire, once Dustin recovers somewhat from his starry-eyed awe of spending New Years Eve with three toothy immortals.

It’s during this evening, in the relaxed chatting and joking around that inevitably develops during campaigns, that Will learns something about Mike that he never knew before. Lucas says something about the dice that Will doesn’t quite catch, and Mike laughs and says, “All right, let’s see _you_ stay in the air with half your cockpit gone.”

“Half’s all you need,” Lucas tosses back with an easy grin, hands folded behind his head as he leans his chair back to balance on two legs. He’s a cocky, handsome kind of guy, with short dreadlocks just touching his ears and an affinity for camo that suggests a past involvement with the army.

Mike rises to the challenge. “You wanna bet? Haul Lu over here, I think I still have a chainsaw somewhere. We can test it out.”

“You touch my girl, you die.”

“Give it your best shot.” Mike spreads his arms, smirking in the way that only an annoying best friend can. “I’ve been waitin’ for years.”

Lucas’s smile falters, and maybe Will would mirror the flash of worry in his eyes if he wasn’t so broadsided by the realization: Mike was a _pilot._

Mike has always been a little vague about the years bridging the gap between parting ways with Nancy and meeting Will. Will knows that he had a lot of different jobs, lived in at least five or six different states, moving whenever it started to become too apparent that he wasn’t ageing. Will knows that he had a few girlfriends, early on, and that he almost dated a guy back in the ‘60s until the guy got drafted. He knows what kind of books and movies and comics Mike kept up with, and that he was in Europe for a while at one point, mostly by accident. Now he’s scrambling to piece together the timeline in his head. It couldn’t have been Vietnam, Mike said he was separated from his almost-boyfriend because the guy went to fight that war and Mike didn’t. And the first World War would have been too early.

Which leaves the second.

Which means Mike must have been pretty freshly turned when he signed up.

Will can imagine it so easily. Mike, as a young immortal, barely able to hold it together around humans but rearing to fight the good fight. Bull-headed and brash. Probably convinced that nothing could go wrong, because after all, it’s not like they could kill him. He probably spent the first ten years of his immortal existence hearing all about how Nancy fought in the Revolutionary War, and Mike idolizes Nancy. Of _course_ he’d sign up.

But then, by the sounds of it, something did go wrong. Half of his cockpit gone, somehow. Air blasting against him like a fire hose. Spinning. Plummeting to the earth. Alarms shrieking.

Will remembers his own crash, his own plummet, and grits his teeth against a nasty wave of flashback.

Dustin chooses that moment to lean over and whisper, “ _World War Two pilots?_ I cannot believe how awesome your life is.”

Will’s answering smile is grim.

Lucas pulls Will aside near the end of their modest party. Dustin left a couple hours ago, when Will started to feel his control slipping, and Mike just left for the bathroom.

“Hey,” Lucas says, leaning to glance up the stairs as if checking for Mike’s return. Satisfied, he turns back to Will. “I wanted to say thanks. For Mike.”

Will’s confusion must show on his face, because he goes on.

“For, you know, being there for him. You didn’t have to stay with him like this, and I know he really appreciates it. I think it’s really good. You know. That he’s not alone anymore.” 

Lucas rubs his hands together, then absentmindedly blows into them - a gesture that Will is coming to recognize as a shared tic amongst immortals. It’s hard to keep the warmth in your extremities when your resting heart rate is so low. 

“He was getting... bad. For a while there. I was really worried, to be honest.” He shuffles his feet like he’s unused to such honest displays of emotion, and Will smiles uncertainly. 

He was getting bad? What’s “bad”?

But he doesn’t want to reject or question Lucas’s thanks, so he just nods and says, “Yeah. Course. He’s my friend.”

“He could use some more of those, to be honest.”

Upstairs, the toilet flushes, and Lucas slaps Will twice on the shoulder before turning to the staircase.

“Yo, Wheeler,” he calls when Mike emerges, “How ‘bout a hunt, yeah? Ring in the new year.”

“Ah, I dunno.” Mike jumps the last few steps. He slept for most of the forty-eight hours before the party and now he’s been buzzing with energy. “Will hasn’t really been up for that yet.”

Lucas slaps a hand to his chest like he’s been shot. “You haven’t taken this poor boy hunting? Michael!”

Will glances between them, confused. “Yes, we have.”

“He means people,” Mike says shortly.

Something in Will’s chest goes cold. _Oh._

Lucas gives another theatrical startle. “My god, man! You mean to tell me you’ve been surviving on animals this whole time?”

Will can’t tell if he’s putting on a show for jokes or if he really is reverting back to a slightly outdated style of speech. He nods, unsure if he should be embarrassed about this or not. Is this the equivalent of admitting he still hasn’t taken the training wheels off his bike?

“ _Heiliger Strohsack!_ No wonder you look half starved!”

“ _Das ist ein Mythos, Lucas, Tierblut funktioniert genauso gut,_ ” Mike mutters, and Lucas gives a bark of laughter.

“Fucking hell, Mike, what happened to your accent? You’ve gotten terrible.”

Will caught the words _myth, function,_ and _good,_ so he’s fairly sure he got the gist of it, but he’s still not exactly happy to be excluded like that. He scowls at them both, resisting the urge to cross his arms like a little kid. “Could we maybe not talk in other languages right in front of the new turn? Thanks.”

Mike looks suitably contrite. Lucas just sighs, spreading his hands. “It’s New Year’s Day! We’re gonna call it quits at, what, 1:00am? _Lame._ It’s not even light yet. Come on, Byers, just try. I promise you’ll like it.” 

Will bristles. Something about Lucas’s knowing smirk hits him in just the wrong place. He’s not dumb; he _knows_ he’d like human blood. That’s exactly why he’s been avoiding it.

“I’m good, thanks. Mike, you should go with Lucas. I’m fine here.” 

The corners of Mike’s mouth pull the slightest bit down. He has such a hilariously transparent face sometimes. Heart on his sleeve. “But I don’t want to leave you alone on New Years. That sucks. I’ll just go another time, it’s fine.” 

“But I don’t wanna keep you from -” 

Lucas interrupts loudly, cutting them both off. “Oh, my god, you two are _killing_ me. You’re like the worst kind of teenage couple. Look, new plan: what about The Archives?”

Mike takes half an angry breath, as if automatically protesting, but then stops. He tilts his head. Thinking.

Will looks between them. “The Archives?”

Lucas’s smile is back. He can tell the idea has some traction, and there’s a sparkle of mischief in his dark eyes. The smile exposes the sharp glint of his canines. “Vamp club.”

“Please don’t call it that,” Mike says, but Lucas ignores him.

“Blood. Alcohol. Hot girls. Dancing. Do I need to say more?”

Will considers. He has been going a little stir crazy lately. They haven’t really left town since the hospital. “That could be fun.”

“You’re in college, right? Got a license? Need us to forge you one? I know a guy.”

“I’m twenty one,” Will says, and Lucas claps his hands together as if it’s all settled.

“There’s gonna be a lot of people there,” Mike says doubtfully, and Lucas rolls his eyes.

“Immortals, dumbass. Other immortals.”

“Not _all_ of them -”

“Wheeler. Mikester. Listen. I’m gonna say this as your best friend. Get your ass out of your shitty duplex.” Mike’s eyes flicker to Will, and Lucas slings an arm around both of them. “He can handle it! Give him some credit. Anyway, like _you_ said, the place will be packed. If he goes AWOL, we’ll just dogpile ‘im. So... Archives?”

Mike leans around him to make eye contact with Will, and Will summons up more conviction than he feels. “I think it sounds fun.”

Mike debates for another moment, then gives in with a nod and a frown. “Archives.”

Lucas hoots in victory, then shoves them both towards the stairs. “Go change, nerds! Try to look cool for once. We’re goin’ clubbin’!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should I be exclusively working on the vampire fic? No. Am I? Yes.  
> As always I'd love to hear any and all of your thoughts!


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